A Visit to China

In March of 1997 we took a brief trip into Guang Dong province to visit a goldfish farm. No ordinary farm though; this was the Tung Hoi Aquarium Company's (THAC) main farm. As hopefully you have seen from the photo section of this web site, THAC are breeders and wholesalers of goldfish of extraordinary quality. These fish are shipped to select retailers all over the world, from Asia to North and South America.

We spent a day and half at THAC, inspecting all their operations, looking at all the fish we could, and taking photos of everything we saw. And there was a lot to see! About 200 ponds plus specialized facilities for breeding, rearing fry, sorting fish, and all other aspects of their business.

The operation is a combination of the best modern techniques and traditional methods. One of the two brothers who founded THAC is an industrial process engineer by training. The other is totally focussed on goldfish culture. The result is a facility optimized for efficient water changing, disease treatment, and controlled production, while also using time-proven feeding regimes and breeding techniques.

If this all sounds like a bit of an "advertisement" up to this point, well, I just was really impressed. After seeing the kind of care their fish get, my efforts on behalf of my fish seem pretty inadequate. They estimated that they hatch (as of spring 1997) about 1 million fry per year. Only a fraction of these are raised and sold, but they continually cull, sort, and grade their fish over and over. This gives you a hint of why this operation is in China; you need a cadre of devoted employees with substantial training and experience, willing to work farming hours (12 hour days 7 days a week). THAC currently has about 50 employees to run all their farming and business activites.

Specific information:

• THAC raises about 50 varieties of goldfish currently plus they are starting up koi production. Note that in Asia a goldfish variety is a particular combination of features and colors. That is, a black oranda and a red oranda are two varieties.
• They feed a homemade food containing fish powder, wheat germ, and other ingredients. It makes a brown paste which the fish get 4 times per day. Many of their fish reach 4 to 5 inches in length in a year.
• They also feed live bloodworm and daphnia. I watched them bring in bucketfuls of these live foods, gathered from the surrounding agricultural lands. The fry are extensively fed on daphnia.
• The water in the ponds is changed every 2 to 3 days and the bottoms of the ponds are scrubbed out. The water I saw was green. The replacement water is drawn from an adjacent river.
• THAC has developed a letter-designated grading system for fish, based on size, finage, etc. The desired result is a consistently applied quality measurement that THAC's customers, the goldfish retailers, understand and trust. This has required extensive training of the THAC staff to apply these metrics consistently.
• The farm is in southern China: the pond temperature in March was already up to about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. I would guess the water temperature in August must exceed 90 degrees. And probably in the 40's and 50's in the winter. I noticed that they had airstones running in many of the ponds; this may help create some water circulation (bottom to top turn over) in the hot weather.

These are some highlights from our trip experiences. There are certainly lots of other interesting things that are left out. Like visiting China and what that was like. Perhaps another time. Here are some pictures of the THAC farm and fish, for your interest:

Click here to go to the Tung Hoi Aquarium Co. Gallery.