Quick Treatment of Catfish
Well, this is not an in-depth talk on the treatment of catfish but an intro to the treatment of catfish.
Catfish are animals that don’t often fall sick and that is because they are adaptive in nature.
The fews reasons that may cause your catfish not to perform better are not limited to changes in water temperature, oxygen level, light and darkness control etc.
We cant talk about it all here but what can you do when you noticed that your catfish is not doing well?
The answer to that question is simple.
You need to have a treatment/isolation pond: This is where you would put sick catfish, the treatment/isolation pond must not be deep so that you can observe the fish closely.
Anytime you notice your catfish not doing well, maybe not eating according to their normal ration of feed, you might need to move them out of that pond. Wash the pond and expose the pond to some sunlight while the catfish are in an isolation pond.
Observe your catfish in an isolation pond.
What are you observing? What percentage of the catfish are eating? Are they swimming well or floating on top of the water?
Are your fish just standing at the base of the pond without doing anything, how long are they standing?
Did I just change their food? Do they like the food?
Do they have any injury in the head or any part of the body?
What causes the injury?
These and many more questions are what you need to ask yourself.
For the sake of this write-up, which is a quick treatment of catfish, you would use salt.
Salt is known to treat catfish but the question is, in what quantity do I need? How do I apply salt to my pond?
Table-size catfish don’t normally fall sick because they are already adapted to the water and environment of the pond and surroundings. But it doesn’t mean that they don’t fall sick. It’s rear.
It is fingerlings, juvenile and newly bought catfish that are transferred from one area to another that usually face or fall sick.
We are still talking on salt as the major treatment for catfish.
If your fingerlings can be put in a bowl with small water that would be enough for them to live but not swim.
If you have a bucket, put water in 1/4 of the bucket and put your fingerlings, take your salt and pour it in a cup, the salt can be much but it doesn’t matter, put water in the cup you pour salt and stir.
Now, pour the salt water from the cup and pour in the bucket of fish Containing 1/4 of water, and start mixing.
Stop mixing, because this shouldn’t take up to 10 seconds.
Mixing, take out a stopwatch and start counting, once it is 2mins in the dot remove all the water, pour the fingerlings in a net and take them back to their pond (treatment pond or normal pond).
Allow them to be in the pond for hours, and feed them later.
Treatment is often done in the morning and the fish are left in the pond till evening before they are feed.
Fish don’t like stress, it would kill them.
Treatment should be more than 2-5mins because it is stressful on its own. So if the time is too long, they would die.
What do you do while your fish are in the bucket before applying salt water?
You would use that time to wash their pond.
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