We decided it was time to sample the products of our labors and have a catfish dinner. While the cook prepared to clean a catfish, I moved some catfish into the quarantine tank to purge. (I don’t think purging is necessary and we don’t bother to do it anymore, we just didn’t know any better this first time.)
purging fish in quarantine tank
We ate our first catfish dinner on August 10th 2008, they were originally put in the system on March 24th 2008. That is less than 5 months from getting the fish till Catfish Dinner. Granted, many of them were quite big when we got them. I expect a year will be a more reasonable amount of time from small fingerlings.
Pretty big
pealing fish
cleaned fish
Now catfish are not scaled they are pealed (unless of course you are really good at doing the fillets which might skip that whole step.) Our first time we did the very basic and simple, skin, gut, clean and fry.
fried catfish and chips
Now I know fried catfish is not the most innovative catfish dinner out there but it was our first Aquaponic meal. Since then we have discovered many new ways to eat catfish. Some of my favorites include; smoked catfish dip, smoked catfish cakes, and best of all baked in a hot/sweet pepper sauce. Other favorites include eating the leftover fish in fish tacos or on nachos.
For those who wish to go read the detail version check out my original system thread. BYAP System Thread Pages 58 (Aug 10, 2008) is the time frame for this Blog post.
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