2002-01-28

Randy's fish farm

Randy is a missionary from the U.S. with a fish farm just up the road from Botter's house. The idea is to sell fish to help fund his missionary efforts in Thailand.

The first picture is Randy in his experimental greenhouse. It's the cold season and the fish aren't growing and mating as rapidly as Randy would like so he is trying a greenhouse to see if raising the temperature will give them some encouragement.

Randy's customers are fish farms that want to buy only male fish. The interesting thing about these fish is their gender is not determined until some time after birth. The principle factor seems to be temperature but Randy tilts the odds further by spiking the fish food with good, old-fashioned testosterone. These are manly fish.

These trays contain eggs and freshly hatched fish.

This is full of fish eggs. The eggs are manually removed from where they would normally reside in their mother's mouth and put in the incubators. The job is done in the simplest way imaginable. Someone takes each pregnant fish and squeezes them to make them give up their eggs. I can't imagine doing that all day.