Take a walk with me

I finally completed the article I have been planning since yesterday, I could have finished it earlier but I have been busy reading other articles on this platform and feeling lazy to complete mine.

I'm an aquaculture student and my coursemates and I did something amazing today; We helped in making babies (it's certainly not what you're thinking).

Just in case you don't know, aquaculture is majorly about the study of fish and other aquatic animals, so when I said helped in making babies, I'm referring to fish, specifically catfish.

The process carried out is known as artificial breeding. You might be wondering; "why not just allow the male and female catfish to get married, live together for a while, and allow nature to take its course so they can have babies?"

I was wondering the same thing during my second year in the university, but I later found out those guys are smart as hell!

Some fishes are capable of breeding on their own while in captivity, but catfishes are stubborn as hell and require all the help they can get. They know when they are held in captivity and will never reproduce because the conditions ain't "right" (they have high standards 😆)

So what was the solution? Artificial breeding

We had to manipulate and trick them to breed and that's exactly what we did today. But before I dive into the activities of today, I will like to properly start this from the top.

Let's walk back a bit to yesterday

Yesterday was when we started the activities before the breeding commenced, sort of like how a pregnant woman makes preparation for her unborn child before giving birth.

Since the female fish can't do the preparation herself, we had to help her out. We cleaned up the hatchery tank where the fertilized eggs will be incubated, purchased materials for surgery, washed the spawning mats, and a host of other activities.

After completing the preparations, everyone went home to prepare for the inducement later in the evening.

Time for the mama fish to be induced

Inducing simply means coercing the female to release eggs (in plain terms). We do that by injecting her with a hormone, which tricks her brain into releasing eggs. The hormone sought of "turns her on" (it's like Viagra, but for fishes 😉).

Most of us later returned in the evening despite the heavy rain that fell earlier. I was reluctant to return to school that evening because of the rain, and I even suggested to my friends to just drop one male into the females' tank, pour the hormone into the water and allow them to take advantage of the cold weather.

No one agreed with my "suggestion" (as expected) so we all walked back to school to start inducing.

We made use of two females, so both of them were injected with the hormone.

The males weren't injected because their sperm (it's called milt in fisheries parlance) is always available and can be collected at any time.

After inducing them, we carefully placed them in separate tanks and went home. We need to return very early the next day before both females go into labour.

A very cold morning

I was supposed to sleep early the previous night so I can wake up early in the morning, but I had to finish my new month article before midnight (see the finished work here).

I could have slept off after publishing the article, but after seeing FarmGirl and HappyBoy's comments, I forgot all about sleep. It even got worse when I saw their sponsorship notifications 😂

I slept off after some hours, only for me to hear a knock on my door after a few minutes.

Me: who is it?

My friend: wake up and start getting ready. We have a fish about to go into labour

I checked the time with my eyes half opened, and it's just 6am 😩 (I'm not an early riser). Anyways, I just stood up immediately and went to take my bath. I usually take custard or oatmeal in the morning, but there was no time for that.

We left the house by 7am (three of my coursemates and I stay in the same house). We arrived at the fish farm about 30 minutes later and some of our coursemates were already waiting for us to arrive.

We immediately retrieved the females so the delivery process can start. Their faces were covered with a wet towel because darkness helps to calm them down.

We flipped the first female over and pressed her stomach gently so the eggs can be stripped into a bowl. The same thing was done to the second female and we got a good amount of eggs. Ideally, we should get about 24000 eggs from both females (I won't bother you guys with the math).

It's time for the male to join the party

The male is the one that usually gets sacrificed in this situation. To collect its sperm sac or milt, we have to open it up.

Yes we can sew it up after we have collected what we want but the fish will just keep suffering, so the best option is to just kill it and end its suffering.

After collecting the milt, it's split open with a blade and the content is washed using saline water into the bowl with eggs. Then the whole thing is mixed together.

The spawning mats (caccabans) have already been placed in the hatchery tank containing water. It's on this spawning mat that we now spread the mixture of eggs and milt.

You might ask why we are making use of spawning mats; the spawning mats replace the role of a nest built by the female if she is in the wild.

A cruel fate awaits the parents

Remember I said only the male will be killed? Well, turns out my coursemates had other plans and all the Catfishes including the females were on death row.

Almost everyone wants all of them to be barbecued and eaten. The majority won the vote and all the fish were killed (I actually did the killing). They were barbecued and only some of us ate it. Some persons don't eat catfish.

The farm manager arrived later on and told us something shocking; eating the female fish can mess up the menstrual cycle of our female coursemates and can even lead to reduced fertility due to the hormone that was used to induce the fish.

But it was okay for now because it's the first time we were eating an induced fish, but subsequent consumption will be disastrous and should be avoided (warning understood loud and clear).

By placing the eggs in the hatchery tank, we were done with the artificial breeding process. By tomorrow, some of the eggs will start hatching and we will start seeing little fishes (fry).

Seeing as we have already killed their parents, we will automatically become their new parents. We are gonna be feeding them, changing their diapers, giving them drugs when they are sick, cleaning up their home and other duties.

I will certainly be dropping updates from time to time about their progress, but let's see if a good number of them will hatch tomorrow.

Thanks for reading.

Lead image credit: unsplash.com