In a greenhouse 120-feet long, every few hours workers tend baby fish smaller than a flea, feeding them newly hatched shrimp so microscopic it looks like a grain of sand. Rows of concrete burial vaults normally used to hold human remains instead house larger fish, including varieties developed at the farm. EkkWill took a black tetra from the Amazon, a nondescript looking fish, and engineered sleek-looking tetras in both black and white with dramatic high fins that shimmer in the water. Nearby are fish a couple inches long, rainbow in color, that turn from dominant blue to green when stressed. While EkkWill has greenhouses protecting 2.3 million square feet of production ponds, smaller farms fall far short of that.
Farmers use plastic as a covering to create a greenhouse.
They say it isn't feasible to cover ponds and tanks annually to brace for an extreme, prolonged cold snap that may come once every two decades. If left up in hot weather, the plastic would bake the fish. EkkWill, run by the Hennessey family, is one of the oldest farms. It produces more than 100 varieties of tropical fish but sells 10-15 times that amount by buying and shipping from other producers. In contrast, Bill Warner raises only African cichlids in his 110 ponds on 15 acres in Ruskin.