How To Start An Intensive Catfish Farming

Catfish farming is one of the profitable agribusiness venture for youths. One could easily make a lot of Money venturing into commercial Catfish farming.
I will give a detailed guide on how I started my own catfish farm. Just do me a favour by patiently reading till the end.
The species of catfish I'm farming. For my fish farm, I am culturing the African catfish known as Clarias gariepinus.

Clarias gariepinushas an average adult length of 1–1.5 m, it reaches a maximum length of 1.7 m and can weigh up to 60 kg. My target is to achieve a live weight of at least 4kg.
The African catfish was realized to be a very suitable species for fish farming for the following reasons:
*.It has fast growth rate and feeds on a large variety of agriculture byproducts
*.It is hardy and tolerates adverse water quality conditions
*.It can be raised in high stocking densities, resulting in high net yields
*.The selling price is higher due to its demand
*.It tolerates difficult conditions in fish farming
System of management
The System of management I used in this catfish farming is Semi-intensive system. It mainly involves fertilizing the pond so that algae will grow as supplementary feed and source of dissolved oxygen for the fishes, and occasionally flushing the pond.
I am using this management option because I stay in a place where there is no constant water supply.

Fertilization of Pond water
Fertilizers are natural or synthetic substances that are used in ponds to increasethe production of the natural food organismsto be eaten by the fish. These organisms includephytoplankton, zooplankton,and insects. They are all part of a complexfood webconverging toward fish production. By increasing the availability of major nutrients,fertilizers promote the development of planktonic algae, which provide food for many fish.
Fish pond can be fertilized with two types of fertilizers.
1.Mineral or inorganic fertilizerswhich contain only mineral nutrients and no organic matter. They are manufactured industrially to be used in agriculture for improving crop production and they can be obtained from specialized suppliers or agro-allied companies.
2.Organic fertilizers, which contain a mixture of organic matter and mineral nutrients. These include poultry droppings, pig faeces, cow dung, rabbit faeces e.t.c
I used poultry droppings for the fertilization of my pond. See the video demonstration of how to fertilize pond.

After fertilizing the pond I let it stand for more than one week. After one week I noticed the growth of algae which is the natural food of the fishes. I then removed the bag of poultry droppings from the pond water.
Stocking with fingerlings of Clarias gariepinus
When I wanted to stock my fish I removed three-quarter of the pond water which is now very green and filled up with clean water. The reason for this is to reduce turbidity and light penetration into the water.
The Catfish I want to farm is the African Catfish scientifically known asClarias gariepinus. I now introduced the fishes into the pond water.

Feeding of the fingerlings
I fed the fishes three times daily; morning, afternoon and night. For the first three weeks(April 4th- April 25th) the fishes were fed 1mm of extruded(floating) fish feed rich in protein content. In the evening of April 25th, I started to feed the fishes with 1.8mm feed and that is what they are eating up till now.
The video below is me feeding the fishes.

Flushing of Fish pond(partially changing pond water)

Although I use the semi-intensive culture of catfish where algae is allowed in the pond water as supplementary fish food and source of oxygen, it is important to flush the pond for a number of reasons.
1. Water changing remove excess nitrates, heavy metals (which will just concentrate if the pond water is only replaced through evaporation). So reducing like three-quarter of pond water and refilling with clean water will reduce the concentration of this compounds.
2. Flushing of pond reduces pond water turbidity which impedes light penetration into the pond water. This turbidity is usually caused by high concentration of organic matter in the pond.
3. It reduces algae boom; a condition in which the green algae becomes over-populated in pond water and harm the fishes by greatly reducing oxygen content of fish pond water.
4. It also helps reduce the foul smell that might be coming out from the fish pond.
Other points to note: Always examine your fishes well and make sure they are well fed with the best feed at the fingerlings stage.

www.agricinfo.com/2017/03/how-to-start-intensive-catfish-farming.html?m=1

There's nothing worse than when your phone memory is full and you don't know what to delete especially when you don't have any SD card.
There was a time 4GB of space meant a lot of space but as we moved into a new generation of smartphones, aspects such as the camera, video quality, apps, and file sizes have increased dramatically.
Android Chapter 7 vs 7: Verily I say unto you, brethren ' Any Android device with a storage capacity less than 16GB is an abomination, so I advise you to flee'
Here are a few ways that can help you to free up space on your Android smartphone and reclaim those valuable gigs.
Why Your Device Storage Is Always Smaller Than Specified
Some people using a 128GB Android device don't even bother about storage capacity filling up. On the other hand, the poor souls with 16GB and 8GB internal storage tend to count every single megabyte. However, you might have noticed that even in new Smartphones with 16Gb memory, the available memory is no more than 12GB.
Is there a way to get all 16GB of storage space?
The answer is no because manufacturers tend to play with numbers when it comes to providing internal storage. If you are given 16GB of storage at the rate of 1000MB = 1GB, the Android system calculates the storage using binary, where 1024MB = 1GB.
Moreover, there is around 2GB of internal storage space that the Android OS takes up, which is the heart of your device. Hence, there is no way to increase the total internal storage capacity to more than what you see in the Storage menu of the Settings app.
#1. Remove Unimportant Apps And Use Lite App Versions
Unimportant apps could be using up a fair amount of storage space that you desperately need. For instance, Facebook and Messenger use up almost 500MB of your device storage, which can be quite the blow on a device with low memory. You can simply switch to the Lite version of the apps which use less than 3mb. Shazam, Skype, and Twitter also have Lite versions.
Apart from the apps that you have installed, there are some apps that the smartphone manufacturers try to force down your throat
These apps are almost useless to the user, and brands like Samsung are guilty of this. You can find the Galaxy Apps, S Health, Flipboard and many other irrelevant apps on their devices.
If you aren’t too keen on removing these bloatware apps entirely by rooting your Android device, disabling them is the next best thing. Simply head over to the Applications menu in the Settings, navigate to these bloatware apps and use “Disable” to render these bloatware apps useless.
#2.Stream Movies Don't Download
I know data subscription is sometimes expensive but most times discretion is the greater part of valor. Streaming a movie will save you more storage space than downloading it. The only extra data you may use up due to streaming is due to the buffer but if your Internet speed is very good you'll only use up the exact amount you use for downloading the movie.
If you're really concerned about your Android storage space running out, hoarding movies on your device’s internal storage won’t just take away precious space, but will slow down the system drastically.
#3 Move Your Files To The Cloud
Backing up your pictures to the cloud will save a lot of storage space.
To make things easier, Android OS offers an automatic backup in the Google photos app. From the Google Photos app, head over to the menu option and select “Free Up Space”. This screen will alert you on how many pictures have been backup up to your Google account and how many images can now be safely deleted.
Apart from photos and videos, you can back up large documents directly to your Google Drive account and access them online, without sacrificing the internal storage space. Since a single Google account offers 15GB of free storage, you can add multiple Google accounts, back up your media content and enjoy virtually limitless space.

People have wondered why I keep trying to re-orientate the minds of Nigerians about jobs. I want to state it clearly to avoid being misunderstood: I have no issue with someone having a job. We all tried our hands at one job or the other. I know the feeling of waking up each morning with sleepy eyes just to avoid being late to work. I know the feeling of having a demanding boss and nosy co-workers. I know the feeling of receiving your salary and after splitting it to meet various needs, there is barely much left. I know and I fully understand.

But there are a couple of things that I learned early enough which smart workers must have realized about their jobs.

1. It is a way of forfeiting your dreams for someone else: Be sincere with yourself, did you ever dream of living your whole life based on the routine of the 8am-5pm job? Very rarely will anybody have such a dream. But this is what has become of so many people, and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. When you received that job, you signed up to work towards the realization of the organization- owned by someone! When are you going to start chasing your dreams?

2. It is a temporary solution to financial problems: Smart people have realized it too. The pay that comes from your job will not cater for your financial problems completely. It will merely give you enough to live by for the month. Hardly will you get the luxury that you see on TV or that you have imagined based on it. And have you observed that most often, the problems you solve with your salary for a month are the same problems you are going to use it for next month? The cycle never really changes!

3. Your paycheck is a reminder that you are not completely free: Now this is one fact that some may doubt but it is true nonetheless. Any one or system that controls your finances to a fairly good extent controls you. It controls your time, energy and also your mental efforts. The idea is it to keep you dependent on the system for another pay because what it offers you will hardly be enough to meet the needs you are faced with. In simple terms, you are not completely free.


4. It keeps you attached to itself like an addiction: Have you not wondered how so many people stay at a job for so long? I have. No job was designed to make you rich. No job was designed for you to achieve financial independence. Also, no job was designed to make you think of leaving (except if things go wrong). What the system will do to you is gradually get you used to receive a salary. Soon enough, you will start resenting the idea of starting your own venture because you will realize that monthly pay that you receive may vanish. It’s like doing drugs. It gets you high for a while and makes you want more.

5. Have a job, but own a business at all cost: Smart people realize that they may have needs that need to be met continually, but they are also aware of the need to secure their finance by owning a business. They realize that what they earn keeps them afloat for the moment but it has no future guarantee. So, rather than forfeit one at the expense of the other, they decide to handle the two. They retain their job while they find and set up a business of their own that they can run. They ensure that the business does not require much of their time so it doesn’t interfere with their jobs. It is a win-win situation for them.

It is said that the power of a seed is not in its size but in its potential. Likewise, starting a business may seem small or of little importance now, but its true worth is in its potential. Its worth is in what it can become three to five months or years from now if you stick with it. So once again, I urge you to be proactive and start a business now rather than grumble about why you think you can’t.

Finding an affordable property to rent/lease can be a real nightmare. Sometimes the stress of checking one property after another, perhaps for months, begins to culminate in a desperation—an eagerness to grab the first one that meets our criteria. When eventually, we find a suitable one, we are often in such a hurry to move in that we do not take time to read and fully understand the terms and conditions contained therein or even insist long enough to have clauses that will favour us inserted into the agreement for fear of losing to other ‘faster’ bidders.
This negligence on the part of tenants can often end up leaving enough room for minor mistakes that can sometimes become so costly we’d wish we never leased/ rented a piece of real estate in the first place. So before you sign that rental documents, keep your eyes peel on:

1. Renovations
Before you quickly begin to renovate and fix the place to suit your taste, be sure to look
at what the agreement says concerning renovation. If the landlord says you are free to renovate the place, be sure you get this in writing in the rental agreement. Otherwise, you may end up bearing the financial burden of restoring the place to its original condition when it’s time to move. You sure don’t want to part with multiples of hundreds of thousands of Naira just because you didn’t pay attention.

2. Rent and utilities
Some apartment complexes may include some utilities as part of your rent, therefore the onus lies on you to read the agreement and take note of which ones, and how much. Some landlords will include stuff like security as part of the rent and still expect you to continue paying for it on a monthly basis afterwards. So know what you have paid for and what you will still pay for.

3. Rent renewal:
It is not hard to come across greedy landlords who can insert clauses that automatically disqualifies a tenant from keeping an apartment if their rent is not renewed in, say, three days. This is especially true when house owners are always on the lookout for tenants who are willing to pay more. Stories abound of tenants whose rent were increased by as
much as five million Naira [in this same Lagos] —right after they had spent millions renovating the place. The tenant had to move out.

4. What will make the landlord kick you out?
How do you move into an apartment without checking the agreement to find out what could earn you an eviction notice by tomorrow morning? This right here may not apply to face-me-i-face-you houses, but if you are doing a substantial sum of money to pay for an apartment, you need to have things clearly spelled out.

5. This is business, no informality
This happens frequently in low-cost housing scenarios. Landlord asks you to pay and
promises to give receipt later, without any agreement of any sort. You pay and enter
one chance. Never, I repeat, never do this, except you can transfer the money to his bank account and have the receipt to show for it.

Source: www.blog.hutbay.com/2016/09/28/five-things-to-look-out-for-in-a-rent-agreement/

I came across this video and it is a really funny video, but the main reason is to show you what women who are in labor what they go through while they are about to have their child. So you out there watching this should show women respect and never take them for granted.

Many people, especially those who are about to make their first land transaction get confused when it comes to asking the right questions.

In some cases, intending investors ask questions like “where is the place?”, “Is it far?” and lots of other questions.
I’ve even had an encounter with someone who asked for the longitude and latitude of the land.

While these questions are not out of place and arise as a result of people trying to be careful so that they don’t make a financial commitment they would later regret, wouldn’t it be better if they knew the right questions to ask?

That brings us to the first question anyone intending to buy land should ask which is *“what is the status of the land?”*

See, before you buy land in Nigeria, it is very important that you know the status of the land!

Knowing the status of the land you are about to buy can save you a lot of money and unnecessary hassles.

Imagine buying a piece of land and erecting a building on it, just for the government to come some years after, and tell you to move out, with claims that your building is illegal because it is sitting on government property.

All these can be prevented if you know the status of the land you are investing in before sealing the transaction.
This brings us to *Land Classification*

Land can be classified as either free or acquired. A parcel of land is considered free if the government has not indicated any interest whatsoever in that land.
Such land is safe to buy because the title on the land can be perfected without issues.

In most cases, such lands will either have a gazette, a C of O or a governor’s consent.

Now that you understand what it means for land to be free, you should also know that all lands that fall within areas that are designated as urban areas are under government acquisition until deemed committed or free.

There are two types of acquisition;
*1. committed acquisition* and
*2.general acquisition*

*Committed acquisition*
A parcel of land is said to be under committed acquisition when the government has indicated an intention to use that land for a specific purpose such as a provision of amenities.
Such lands belong to the government and can never be available for use by individuals.

If you purchase land that is under committed acquisition, it will be impossible for you to perfect your land title and you’ll only be occupying the land until the government comes to kick you out.

*General acquisition*
Lands that are under “general acquisition or “global acquisition can later be confirmed ‘free’ or ‘committed’.
A land under general acquisition can become free by a process called *excision*.

“Excision is a process whereby the government releases a portion of an expanse of land that is not committed"

If a parcel of land that was formerly under acquisition becomes excited, it is then considered free and becomes gazetted.

The gazette then becomes the title of the land and such land is safe to buy because a proper title can be processed on the land.

A second case where lands under general acquisition can be released is if an individual purchased a land that was under acquisition without going through an excision process.

Such lands can go through another process called “ratification” or “regularization” in which the landowner pays for the land to be ratified or regularized.

The only conditions, in this case, are that the land in question must not fall within a committed area and that the purpose for which the land was bought does not disrupt the original plan of the state.

Conditions for ratification may differ from state to state.

I hope by now you understand the most important question to ask when buying land in Nigeria and the kind of lands you should avoid.

Thank you.