I am looking to set up a small fish breeding/plant growing setup to turn a profit of at least $40-$50/month. It's not a lot, so it shouldn't be too hard, right? Or am I crazy and that is a lot to expect from fish and plants?
It's easy to do if you have space, warmth and light.
If you have containers on the ground, get some rubber mats (made from recycled car tyres) and put the mats down, and put the containers on the mats. The rubber mats insulate the floor and stop the containers getting as cold. You will still need to heat the water but you won't waste as much power because you won't have cold coming up from the ground.
Anyone who has a fish room should invest in the rubber mats. They make a huge difference to the temperature. They are also water proof and last forever.
The main thing with the rubber mats is to lay them out where they are going to be and leave them for 24 hours. Then push them together and cut them to fit. When the mats are stacked on top of each other at the shop, they squish out a bit. If you lay them and cut them straight away, there will be gaps between them 24 hours later because they will have gone back to their normal shape (not squished flat) during that time.
Insulate the walls and roof of any fish room. You can use polystyrene foam or any other insulation. Insulation should be at least 4 inches thick and 6+ inches of insulation is better.
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STANDS AND CONTAINERS
Have multi-tier stands so you can stack tanks/ containers one above the other and get more into the room. I had 3 tier stands in my fish room and that maximised the number of tanks in the space I had. You can do 2, 3, 4 or more tiers depending on the height of the tanks and the height of the room.
You can use glass aquariums, plastic storage containers, fibreglass ponds, or anything that holds water and is made from food grade safe materials.
The more containers of water you have in the room and the less air spaces you have, the more stable the water temperature will be. When you heat air, there is nothing to hold the heat in the air. So when you open a door, cold air comes in and warm air goes out. Then you have to heat up the air again.
When you heat water, the water holds the heat much longer than air holds heat. This means the warmth from the water in the containers, warms the air up and you use less power heating the room.
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LIGHT FOR PLANTS
If you want to grow plants, you need light. Most plant farms grow their plants in green/ glass houses and use natural sunlight. Some have artificial lights that can come on during winter when the days are shorter, or if it's overcast. But most of their light is natural from the sun.
Depending on where you live, you can put skylights into the roof/ ceiling, or use LED or fluorescent lights. Get decent length light units and run them across the room. The fish don't need much light but the plants do.
eg: I used 4 foot long fluorescent light units above all my tanks, including small tanks that were next to each other. I would have a number of small tanks side by side, and have 1 long light unit over 4 tanks.
If you build a dedicated fish room, then have alternating panels of clear and solid on the roof.
eg: tin panel then clear panel, then tin, then clear.
The clear panels let lots of light in. The tin stops light coming in and provides some shade. You don't need full sun in a fish room unless you live at the poles.
If you live in a cold climate, double or triple glaze any areas that can't be insulated.
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WATER
Water is the next issue. If you live in a dry environment, water will cost more. Some places have cheaper water than others. You might go through a lot of water and that comes out of the profits. If you can collect clean rain water, that can help.
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WHAT FISH TO KEEP AND BREED
Whilst guppies are good sellers, you don't get much for them unless they are nice looking and uncommon varieties. The shops can buy in assorted guppies for 50 cents each so you are competing with that. If you have unusually coloured guppies (like
@emeraldking does), then you can get more for them. If you have common plain guppies, you won't get as much for each fish. Both types of guppy cost the same to keep and grow, the difference is in how much you can get for them.
This applies to all fish. Cichlids breed like rabbits and people and you can end up with thousands but the shops will only take a few dozen. So breeding thousands is pointless if you are going to be left with thousands.
Rainbowfish sell a few here and a few there. The shops might give you a few dollars for them but they can also produce a lot of young and unless you sell them cheap, you will end up with lots.
Livebearers are the same, you can end up with hundreds of guppies that shops might take for a low price, or they might refuse them because they are drab.
Your best bet is to get a variety of fish to breed. You breed a few species each week and rotate through the collection of adults.
eg: When I was breeding rainbowfish I had over 60 species and over 80 river systems of fish. Each week I bred 4 or 5 species (a couple of common species that were good sellers, and a couple of species that weren't as popular). I could sell all the popular species all the time, but I might only sell a few of the uncommon species. So I only bred the unusual stuff a couple of times a year so there was a steady supply but not an over supply that would have seen me holding hundreds of fish nobody wanted.
I also had cichlids, catfish, unusual tetras and peaceful barbs that I bred too. Again I didn't breed all of them all the time. A lot of the cichlids would breed continuously and when I had young fish that could be sexed, I contacted the shops and asked if they wanted any. I would then sell a heap of young cichlids. This cleared out the cichlid tanks and the adult fish would breed again. A few months later and I had more young to sell.
Things like catfish would breed randomly in the tanks and I just removed eggs or fry when I could. They were sold to anyone who wanted them, when they were available.
Barbs were bred occasionally, maybe once a month or so. They usually produced several hundred young per batch and the shops would take 20-50 at a time. So I didn't breed them too often because they aren't huge sellers.
Basically have a variety of fish and plants to sell. Have some common stuff and some more unusual stuff. This way you can sell the common stuff as your bread and butter, and when the unusual stuff breeds, you get a little bonus when you sell them.
Besides guppies, bristlenose catfish and zebra plecos/ bristlenose are good sellers. The zebra bristlenose can fetch good prices. Melanotaenia pracox is a good seller. Apistogramma cacatuoides is a reasonable seller and can get good prices. If you have space, angelfish are good sellers. Ruby barbs were reasonable sellers but more so if the shop sold them instead of tiger barbs. They resemble each other except ruby barbs are nowhere near as nippy as the tiger barbs.
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GOOD PLANTS TO GROW
Ambulia, Hygrophila polysperma, H. ruba/ rubra, H. corymbosa, Elodia or Hydrilla, narrow Vallis and unusual sword plants are worth growing. So is Water Sprite.
The sword plants are slow growing underwater but can be grown in pots out of water. When grown out of water they produce seeds that can be grown and the young plants can be put underwater, or you can grow them out of water (hydroponically) like most commercial growers do. The other plants are all fast growing and live in water. The water sprite is a floating plant that can also be planted in the substrate.
You can sell cuttings to shops or sell plants in pots. Cuttings should be around 6-12 inches long, depending on plant. Vallis is sold with the roots so no cuttings. Water sprite is sold as individual plants.
Water sprite is one of the better floating plants and grows in most tanks. It is an ideal plant for livebearers and Bettas.
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You can grow the plants in pots, trays or just gravel in the bottom of the tank. We used pots and trays so we could move them around easier and not disturb their roots. You can also add fertilisers to pots and if it's done properly, the fertiliser does not leach into the water.
Most shops will pay more for plants grown in pots with an established root system, vs cuttings.
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GROWING PLANTS IN POTS
We use to grow plants in 1 or 2 litre plastic icecream containers. You put an inch of gravel in the bottom of the container, then spread a thin layer of granulated garden fertiliser over the gravel. Put a 1/4inch (6mm) thick layer of red/ orange clay over the fertiliser. Dry the clay first and crush it into a powder. Then cover that with more gravel.
You put the plants in the gravel and as they grow, their roots hit the clay and fertiliser and they take off and go nuts. The clay stops the fertiliser leaching into the water.
If you have access to small plastic plant pots/ tubes, you can grow plants in them and sell the plant in the small pot. If you use big pots (like the 2 litre container), you normally remove the plants and either sell them as bare rooted plants or repot them into smaller pots when you sell them. Normally we just sold them as bare rooted plants.
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Get a big air pump to run air operated sponge filters in the containers. It is much cheaper than power filters and only uses one power point.
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