Gachukia: I quit TV to grow fish in greenhouse

Tony Gachukia holding fish harvested from his green house fishpond at his Thamuru Fish Farm on June 10, 2014. Photo | JEFF ANGOTE

What you need to know:

  • Gachukia has transformed what was idle family land at Kahaine Village into a fish farm with over 15,000 fish in 14 ponds situated on one corner of the 13-acre (5.2 hectare) land.
  • Gachukia would not reveal how much money he makes from his venture, saying, he would rather concentrate on teaching other farmers his techniques.

Murang’a is cold and rainy now. With average temperatures of 20 degrees Celsius and over 1,100mm of rain annually, the area is a good haven for any farmer.

It is in this county that Tony Gachukia, a former sports anchor, engages in farming. For almost a decade, up to 2009, he made a name as a versatile sports news anchor on television.  Then he suddenly disappeared from the screen.

Seeds of Gold tracked him and can now reveal what he has been up to for the years he has not been reading news.

PEOPLE HAD FAILED

“When I left the media, I asked myself what I wanted to do with my life. Agriculture was one of the ideas I had although many people I knew who had engaged in it had failed. I knew this is what I wanted to do for a long time and I couldn’t stop just because people had failed,” he says as he welcomes us to his Thamuru Fish Farm.

“Things have to be done correctly for them to work.” The business suits people were used to seeing him in have since been replaced with gumboots and overcoats.

Gachukia has transformed what was idle family land at Kahaine Village into a fish farm with over 15,000 fish in 14 ponds situated on one corner of the 13-acre (5.2 hectare) land. He rears tilapia, catfish, Mozambican tilapia and red comet ornamental fish in an integrated system.

“Because of the cold conditions in Murang’a, a lot of farmers who ventured into farming through the Economic Stimulus Programme failed because fish farming does not thrive in cold areas.”

His first pond dug in 2009 suffered a similar fate. Fish took too long to mature causing him massive losses.

“I noticed that when it’s cold, fish don’t eat, and thus they do not grow but when it’s warm, they become happy and start eating again.”

“To solve this problem, I decided to create a Lake Victoria-type of environment that would be cost-effective and guarantee me maximum returns,” he adds.

He built greenhouses over a few of his ponds and realised the fish in them grew faster. To cut costs on the remaining ones, he built movable arcs covered with transparent greenhouse material.

These arcs that warm the ponds to about 30 degrees are only removed when feeding and harvesting providing an all-year round warm environment for his fish.

And unlike most farmers who can only practice fish farming if they are close to a river or stream, he uses borehole water, which he admits does not have enough oxygen.

Before reaching the ponds, the water passes through plastic boxes with several layers of mazed networks splitting it to several droplets as it touches the water surface.

COMPETE FOR OXYGEN

“Basic science says that water is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen and by disturbing the water, it gets aerated as oxygen gets attracted to the water droplets,” he explains.

He has also installed an oxygen pump that provides the ponds with the air at night.

“During the day, oxygen levels in the ponds are fine, but at night, the algae in the water and fish compete for oxygen, making it depleted. So in the morning, you find fish gasping for air at the surface. That is why I have the oxygen pump.”

Gachukia has also developed a home-made recycling system that cleans dirty water from the ponds instead of pouring it away. This, he says, will help many poor farmers who cannot afford the cost of pumping clean water every week.

A solar pump pushes water out of the ponds into the simple plant made of three plastic tanks. In the first tank, it is slowly stirred with a rotating disc making impurities settle at the bottom before moving to the second tank.

“Fish secrete ammonia, which becomes poisonous if not removed, so the second tank is pumped with oxygen to convert the ammonia to water and nitrogen.” Thousands of serrated plastic bottle tops are placed in the water to attract the remaining nitrites.

“I learnt this from a fish farming seminar in Ethiopia and decided to try it and it is working,” he says.
The third tank has a sieve that takes out any remaining solid matter before making its way back to the ponds.

“Fish are prolific breeders; after three months, they become mature and start breeding. One female can produce 100 eggs,” he says.

“If uncontrolled, there will be overpopulation, which will lead to problems in fishing because the farmer loses count of how many fish they have.”

To counter this, he reduced the number of female fish.

He only rears Super YY chromosome breeding males that he acquired from a fellow farmer, which produce male offspring only.

The breeding fish are stocked in breeding ponds in the ratio of one to two.

“Buckets are placed in the ponds according to the number of fish and naturally, each male will spend a lot of time in the buckets and because of their nature, two females will also be attracted to the males and they will mate.”

After laying the eggs, the females carry them in their mouths and continue staying in the buckets to protect the eggs from other fish, which may eat them.

“Every week, to prevent the females from hatching the eggs orally, we get the buckets out and extract the eggs from the females and transfer them to artificial hatchery tubes.”

The cylindrical plastic tubes are designed to resemble the conditions of the mouth of the fish with water circulating in one direction before being oxygenated under ultraviolet light that takes the place of gills. “This way, I am in full control of the number of fish I have in the farm,” he says.

 When water from the tilapia and red comet is completely used after a cycle of recycling that lasts one month, it is channelled to another pond that contains catfish. The pond is also fed with water from the cattle zero-grazing units, which, he says, makes the fish grow huge.

ATTRACTED TO LIGHT

The catfish pond also has fluorescent lights hanging over it on several points to attract insects.

“If catfish are deprived of proteins, they will start eating the smallest ones,” he says.

“Insects are the best source of proteins especially termites. I figured out that since they always get attracted to light, they get burnt by the bulbs and fall into the water giving the fish free protein,” he adds.

Gachukia would not reveal how much money he makes from his venture, saying, he would rather concentrate on teaching other farmers his techniques.

And does he regret ever working for the media?

 “I wish I had done this a long time ago,” the graduate of business and journalism says.