Catfish fingerlings production starts with selecting females brood stock fish. Ideally, brood stock ponder between 500-1ooog, with larger fish being difficult to deal with and often resulting in egg losses ahead of stripping, but its advisable to make use of large fishes if someone can help in handling. In general, mature females are selected as outlined by this criteria.



In African Catfish Hatchery, catfish fry come out from eggs under an artificial condition in commercial numbers. These fry grow into fingerlings and they later become juveniles.

The past practice of capturing African catfish fingerlings or juveniles from the wild often encouraged disease infestedstocks and the supplies of the fingerlings in large numbers from the wild are not always consistent.

This practice has never beencommercially reasonable since theman hours expended in capturing the fishes are not commensurate with the fishes caught.

The African catfish breeding season inthe wild usually commences with theadvent of the rains. The coming ofthe rains in tropical Africa is mainly characterized with extreme temperature fluctuations. These fluctuations could prevent high survival of the African catfish fry.

In addition to these limiting factors for securing viable and good catfish seeds, African catfish fingerlings caught from the wild could have in one way or the other experienced stunted growth due to lack of readily available good food.

Runoff water from rainfall at times introduces polluted water into streams and rivers that house these fry and fingerlings.

The African Catfish Hatchery therefore became pertinent to strategically address these shortcomings in the African catfish seed procurement.

Fry need consistent good food provided in sufficient quantities at regular intervals for smooth transitional growth.

Water quality is equally important.

Pollution of water in the wild at certain instances cannot be easily prevented.

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