When hungry, goldfish and koi will put anything that fits in their mouth that is thrown on the water. If they like they will chew on it, if they don't they will spit it out

Living along the Mississippi and as a fisherman, we have watched our area closely. South and North of us they already have canneries that are taking the carp and useing them for something ( I am not saying what Fast food restaurant is rumored to be buying the processed meat). There is also Federal funding being pushed through to find ways to export the carp as they are prized in Asia. There is also a Fish market North of us that when they get the Asian carp and smoke and sell them they cant keep them in stock, because they say the meat is 100 times better than normal carp. That being said the idea of using them for commercial purposes has some concerned if they overfish them then some may start encouraging the reproducing of the evasive species. I have used fish in my garden and even buried deep the critters still find them, but use every year Fish emulsion.

Curiously, I may have discovered an ideal BSF habitat but accident. Previously I had an open compost pile. The local home owners association banned it (even though the county distributed free bins). I still wanted to compost but didn't want to pay $60 for a new one so I built an enclosed on. Weeks later is was filled with BSF. Here is what I did. Supplies: -Medium size black trash can and a top -hardware cloth -nut and bolt (about 16) that will fit through the slots in the hardware cloth -one bungie cord Building it: I turned over the trash can and using a bowie knife I slowly cut out a hole in the bottom or the trash can (about half the diameter of the bottom of the can. Using wire cutters I then cut a circular hardware cloth piece out slightly larger. I drilled holes in the bottom slightly smaller then the bolts around the hole I had just cut. I then placed the hardware cloth over the hole and bolted it in place. I used the bungie cord to secure the top in place so no critters could get in. The ideas was that water could drain out of the bottom, no large critters could get in the top or bottom and earth worms could get in. What has happened is the enough air (it's on the mulch) has entered the bottom and escaped through the gas in the tops to aerate it a bit. Kitchen scraps have kept it most enough. And about a billion BSF larve live there and come and go as they please through the hardware cloth. I plan to add the materials to the garden at Thanksgiving. After that most scraps I add freeze for the winter and they will have a no batch in the spring. It's essentially an out door disposal. No smell and not much space needed. Everything was purchased at home depot and the total was less than $30 and fit in the back of my subaru forester.

Grass carp eat algea apparently, so you wont have to much of a blanket weed problem, but they are placid fish mix well with others no problems, can grow to a couple of feet long tho.