BY FIONA MOTSA
MBABANE-Since the introduction of Aquaculture in the Kingdom of Eswatini last year, fish farming has moved to greater heights.
Ten fish farmers have received new stock of fingerlings after it was discovered that the Tilapia fish farmers took longer to reach harvesting stage, making it difficult for them to practice commercial fish farming.
Taiwan Technical Mission’s Lin Ying mentioned that they were still distributing more fingerlings to fish farmers.
“We are looking forward to seeing Eswatini fish farmers being able to meet market demand through having a continuous flow of fish production.
“We can gladly say fish farmers are slowly moving away from small scale fish farming as this type of Tilapia is expected to take about five to six months to get ready whilst the older Tilapia was taking 10 to 12 months.
“This means that farmers will be able to carry two cycles in one year. Moreover, farmers are given a record book to easily keep track of fish records from the day they received fingerlings until harvesting stage,” said Ying.
Yin also mentioned that technical mission would continue offering technicians to assist farmers.
“Technicians will continue offering technical assistance to fish farmers every two weeks. During the visits, a water demonstration will be done (test water pH, Oxygen, and temperature as well as monitoring fish growth whereby tilapia will be weighed and recorded. “The fingerlings distributed make up 95 percent of males. This will benefit the fish farmers because chances of reproduction will be very slim, making it easier for them to harvest once and the fish population will be easy to control,” said Ying.
