Prime, tasty keli (catfish)
Prior to owning the farm and getting into producing fresh water fish, I didn’t like fresh water fish and stayed away from Keli like the plague. The keli that I had tasted has a muddy taste as well as had a smell. Even now when I go to supermarkets, I can detect whenever there is “gutted” keli – there is a distinct odor! However, I kept hearing how some people raved over keli so I decided to experiment and raise my own keli. After gutting and cleaning over 100 keli recently, I can definitely say that I didn’t come out smelly :). It seems to be a popular fish especially crispy fried keli and smoked keli in coconut milk with bird’s eye chillies (masak lemak keli dengan cili padi).
After my initial proof-of-concept, several key components were clear to me:
- Good, clean, uncontaminated water source
- Quality feed with scheduled feeding times
- Flowing water to ensure removal of fish wastes and prevent waste build-ups
We are blessed with having a good, clean source from upriver where the water has not been contaminated that you can even drink directly from it. You can even go swimming with the keli though I do not recommend it just in case you get a feel of the sting from them. We also do not use chemical herbicides or pesticides to ensure that these chemicals do not end up in the fish ponds from the water drainage.
During the first month, I feed the frys with high protein starter/growth fish pellets to ensure proper growth. Once the average size of the fish was approximately 6 inches long, I started feeding them what is called “grower feed”. We also included fresh greens such as young tapioca leaves, keladi leaves as well as tebrau shoots. Once a week, they would also get the inner pseudostem of banana plants or ubud pisang. The inner pseudostem serves a dual purpose: as an additional element to the feed and also as a water cleanser. The keli also feed on other types of small fishes that came in with the water flow. We do not feed it with any carcasses or chicken innards.As far as possible we try to emulate what fishes eat naturally.
With approximately 10,000 keli, it was important for us to ensure that there is no waste buildup in the ponds hence the constant inflow and outflow of the water helped managed the water quality level as well as waste removal.
As the fish do not all grow at the same rate, similar to other life forms, it was important to perform grading of the fish by size. This also helps reduce the canibalization of the smaller fish by the larger fish as well as help us in grouping the fish ready for sale. This task is performed every three weeks.
Moving forward, we have learnt that we will need to add “cages” to help in the grading efforts as well as ensuring higher productivity.
From the farm, we sell fresh keli and have started the sales process. At the moment, the sales is done once a month but we are putting into place a fortnightly schedule and ultimately, a weekly schedule.
As at the farm, we also grow lemongrass along with other herbs and condiments, I decided to experiment in making smoked keli with lemongrass infusion. It takes about 4-6 hours of slowly smoking to produce the smoked keli. I love the taste of it with its slightly lemony taste and tried it in rice porridge, similar to how you would add salted fish or other”bits”. It gives a different delicious flavor to the porridge. This will be a near-future product of SHL and will be made available at the SP Sunday morning market as well as by special order. I am happy that we have received good reviews on the taste of our keli and we hope with further improvements made, insyAllah, we can continue to produce tasty, quality keli.
If you would like more information on purchasing our keli, you can contact us via e-mail at suriahelanglui@yahoo.com or call 019-2089062.
