raiseing florida bait fish

Question
Dear Mr Coleman im looking into raiseing florida mud minnows i live on the east coast of florida.most of the bait stores around my area are always having supply problems.i have a good bit of land to work with that has lots os storage space to use,i have found a cheap supply of 400 gallon water tanks that can be cut in half to give me two tanks.so what im would like to know is,some info on there breeding and how to get them to breed out of season
the kind of equipment i would need to maintain the tanks and what kind of food they can be fed.thanks for the answers

Answer
Hi William,
 Hmmm... I have to tell you that if you want to do it because it is an interesting thing to do, then fine, but if you want to do it to make money, the odds of coming out ahead are really slim.  I suspect you will put a lot more money into the food and maintainance than you will ever get selling the bait fish.  If I was going to try to raise baitfish for profit, I would do it in artificial ponds, not water tanks. There is just waaaaayyyy too much maintenance and cost associated with doing it in tanks.   Even in ponds, I suspect the margins would be very slim.  You have to think about how much you can sell these things for (a few pennies) and how many you would have to sell (and to whom) to even come close to covering your cost.   For example, say you sold 1000 at a penny a piece... your gross on that is $10.00 which is probably not going to cover the gas to get them to the bait store.  Even at 10cents a piece, you are only up to $100 before cost....  and how many could a bait store want each week?  

 As for breeding, that depends on exactly which species you are talking about.  Getting them to breed out of season would likely require you to do something to heat the water -- most North American fish are cued by water temperature.   

 For any kind of commercial fish raising, you would get commercial grade fish food, e.g., Purina trout chow or soemthing equivalent.  i.e., basically the fish equivalent of Purina puppy chow, etc

  Bottom line: I would check very carefully into the economics of doing this before you put out a bunch of money and labor.  There maybe a very good reason why the bait store runs out, i.e., that the cost to produce the item is much higher than people are willing to pay for it.

-- Ron
  rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com
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