// About
Nembwe breeds over 300 species of ornamental fish
This family-owned, passionately run farm, Nembwe Fish Farm is located in the picturesque Winelands of Stellenbosch near Cape Town. The farm is on a unique seasonal wetland conservation area home to rare and endangered plant species and diverse birds and wildlife. The facility employs 20 people from the surrounding communities, and Neil Calver, an aquaculturist, is the managing director and driving force behind the operation.
Over the past two decades, the team at Nembwe has successfully developed the farm to breed over 300 species of Ornamental fish. These include Koi, Goldfish, Tropical fish, and African and American Cichlids. Nembwe also propagates a variety of pond and aquarium plants. The fish breeding techniques used by Nembwe allow the facility to produce and market ornamental fish, thus reducing the need for collecting exotic fish from the natural environment.
The facility is associated with academic institutions, and the farm is linked with students and academics interested in ichthyological studies and research.
Facilities
Our ever-expanding production and distribution facilities consist of 4 indoor hatcheries containing over 1000 tanks, offering space in a temperature-controlled environment to intensively reproduce and distribute tropical ornamental fish species effectively.
Various hothouses, containing 150 production ponds, filtering through aquatic plant propagation beds, are home to around 200 livebearers and African cichlid broodstock species.
The cold-water production system consists of numerous concrete and plastic, bird-net-enclosed ponds. Fish are selectively bred in the warm summer months in these ponds. An additional 20 spacious earthen ponds are used for effectively rearing fish stocks to a marketable size.
The entire system is supplied with water recirculating from the large, rehabilitated quarry dam on the farm.