our fish farm

The ancient Danube, where it left the Alps, slowed down, pouring down a multitude of smaller, larger pebbles that rolled over it, above which a humus layer formed under the influence of the richly proliferating and occasionally extinct flora and fauna. It was also the case in the Almásfüzitő area, where István Vida started working as a young agricultural engineer. He soon realized that not only the cultivation of excellent arable land, but also the extraction of the gravel sea beneath it could be an even more lucrative activity in an increasingly industrialized area. In the mine formed in the bed of the gravel mine, which is constantly fed by the nearby Danube leaking through the gravel bed, the fish of the Danube soon appeared -> bream, carp, perch, perch, which István supplemented with a little carp planting, much to the delight of the anglers.

As a local man, he read about the area’s famous water and promise catches in the Middle Ages, which gave him the idea to try to “resurrect” these “fossils”. One of his friends, Árpád Rideg, a sturgeon breeder, embarked on a project 5 years ago, at the end of which, perhaps, once again, the news of the former fabulous abundance of water and promises swept the Danube section of Komárom.

Step by step, Fodina Fish Ltd. at first established an air-conditioned fish hatchery unit, where tens of thousands of small goat larvae have been growing day by day this year. At the age of 3 months, avoiding from here, they got out into the sunlight to take possession of the large outdoor pool pools. It is true that the population density of these 300 m3 “kindergartens” each does not break records, but that was not the final goal for István. He is more of a believer in organic fish farming, where little fishes can “live like fish in the water,” and with their rapid growth they also thank their owners for the almost limitless magnitude of the gently spreading lake water.

In the modern recirculating system, the water flowing from the fish will first flow into the adjacent biological filter lake, where it will dump most of the sludge load. Here, on the “table” of beneficial “mud-eating” bacteria, after the blessed process of natural biodegradation, trickling between the zigzagging paths of the reed walls, it is returned to the great mining bed to be cleaned to begin again and again in the great cycle of nature.

In addition to the Sterlet (Acipenser ruthenus), the Russion Sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedti) and Great Sturgeon (Huso) huso that are once here, after their successful wintering, “grow like mushrooms after rain,” just to convince the farmer to feed them. István is happy to do this, even if he hasn’t had much income from these fish so far. But how could it be, since they will reach their sexual maturity many years, decades later, when they avoid it, hopefully into the Danube riverbed. Of course, for others, this pace may be too slow, where you have to wait patiently for the cold seasons to do anything comfortable. The pebbles waited even more underground, and finally his time came! That will be another story, we hope, and then we can report on it once.