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Murray cod proves to be catch of the day for Condabilla Fish Farm

When it comes to Australian aquaculture, images of salmon farms in Tasmania’s cold waters or ponds near the coast North Queensland spring to mind.

You don’t think of a fish farm out the back of Chinchilla, but it’s here among the broadacre crops and cattle properties that you’ll find Condabilla Fish Farm, which has been operating for over 20 years.

It is Australia’s second largest Murray Cod producer.

Mark Oliver and his wife Lanh Vuong managed the farm for two previous owners before taking on a 10-year lease with first option to buy in May, 2022.

They sell around two and a half tonnes of Murray Cod into Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane each week and will increase this to 3.3 tonnes by the end of 2024.

While many people have bad memories of Murray Cod as the muddy fish their grandad caught in the river that they had to eat for tea while wishing their parents would just buy fish and chips from the shop like their mates’ families, the quality of the modern farmed Murray Cod is light-years away from that distant memory.

This is why it has undergone a renaissance with culinary experts saying it deserves a second chance.

Mark says a well farmed Murray Cod is an extremely versatile product with its white flesh, a nice fat profile and delicious taste.

It is this refined taste, and the fish’s exposure on shows like Master Chef and My Kitchen Rules where chef Josh Niland’s “nose-to-tail” approach to using as much of the fish as possible, that has led to Murray Cod’s growing popularity.

Yet despite the increasing demand, Murray Cod are only a small part of Australian aquaculture.

This is because Murray Cod are not an easy fish to farm and while individual farms have progressed in leaps and bounds, an industry wide focus on advancing the industry is yet to materialise.

An example of this is the once-ayear spawning window for Murray Cod compared to Barramundi where industry has invested in technologies meaning Barramundi can be bred year round.

Condabilla has some natural advantages which give it an edge over other Murray Cod farms. The farm is Australia’s northern most Murray Cod farm and draws its water from the Condamine River.

This comes with warmer water temperatures allowing for more consistent year-round growth.

When the water temperature is 9 degrees in Victoria in winter, it is generally 13 degrees at Condabilla and at that temperature the fish are still eating and growing well.

Mark and Lanh’s ethos is simple: They don’t want to be the biggest, but they do want to be the best.

In early 2022, they stopped farming Silver Perch and Jade Perch to focus solely on Murray Cod.

With a focus on quality above

FarmedMurraycodhavea cleanertastethanwhatwas previouslyassociatedwith codcaughtinfreshwater;the wheelswhichpushfresh oxygenintothefishraceways aroundtheclockarepowered by1.5kilowatts;LanhVuong andMarkOliverare Australia’ssecondbiggest producerofMurraycodat theirCondabillaFishFarm.

Pictures:JacintaCummins everything else, their fish are purged for six days in clear bore water, which is double the industry standard of two to three days.

The longer purge means the fish are cleaner and have a smaller bacteria load which in turn greatly reduces flesh decomposition.

The quality of Condabilla’s product has opened the door for their Murray Cod to be offered on the menus of fine dining restaurants like Altitude at Sydney’s Shangri-La, Fire Door in Surry Hills and Donna Chang in

Brisbane, all of which have been lauded for culinary excellence by both industry and food critics.

Condabilla sells the vast majority of its Murray Cod whole for $24-$30 a kilogram.

Purging and marketing their Murray Cod is only a small part of Condabilla’s pond to plate journey.

Condabilla’s unique methods used to farm their Murray Cod make them the only fish farm of their type in Australia.

Their ponds are larger than other fish farms with the largest being around 6.5 hectares.

The fish are grown in purpose built concrete raceways [think of rows of long concrete swimming pools] prior to filling the ponds.

The result is that only a small percentage of the large pond is devoted to growing fish, while the vast majority of the pond is a natural ecosystem.

“We don’t actually exchange water in any of our ponds and any waste produced is assimilated by the large ponds,” Mark says.

“We’re basically creating our own little ecosystem in there, so there’s no discharge back into the environment.”

Before the fish are put out into the raceways, there is a lot of hard work growing them from eggs to fingerlings, then onto juveniles.

The large ponds house the broodstock (parent fish) where they are kept away from the fish in raceways and have a great supply of natural feeds like shrimp and other fish.

In late August spawning drums are placed into the ponds for the females to lay their adhesive eggs on.

The drums are shipped to a hatchery where they are hatched and grown to 0.8-1 gram fingerlings before coming back to Condabilla fingerlings in early December.

They are then grown in tanks until they are large enough to be moved to the raceways.

This is a particularly stressful time as they eat six times a day and are highly carnivorous.

If they are not size graded regularly, thousands of fish can be lost due to them eating each other.

The fingerlings cost around four times other species fingerlings and with only one spawning annually, they cannot just be replaced with the next month.

When they reach the raceways in the growout ponds, the size grading continues as they will eat each other until well over 1 kilogram.

While monitoring water quality and their health status is constant, feeding is still the main game.

Getting feeding right is the difference between profit and loss.

“From a profit standpoint, we want a two kilo fish because they are more profitable than a one kilo fish,” Mark says.

“After cod get to that kilo, even 1.5 kilo in weight they become a little bit more relaxed, a little bit less violent toward their friends and their feeding becomes more regular.

They turn into lazy fish and grow quite well to reach that two kilo size when they are about two years old.

“The fine dining market we’re expanding into likes a two kilo fish not only for the fillets but for their good sized frame as they use as much of it as possible for broths, soups and other things.

“This appeals to us more than other markets which only want fillets meaning that there’s a lot of wastage.”

While Mark has worked in aquaculture more than 30 years, Lanh has a lifetime of experience to draw on as her family are fish farmers from northwest Vietnam’s Lao Cai province.

Her polished red manicure belies her essential role in the operation.

She oversees the feeding program, and as the fish feed constantly, she works seven days a week most weeks.

She explains the differences between fish farming in Australia and their farm in Vietnam. For starters, the species her family farms eat grasses, but at Condabilla the fish eat fish meal based pellets which are 40 per cent protein and although there are automated feeding systems, the very labour intensive work of handfeeding is also critical for the optimisation process.

In Vietnam, Lanh’s family take live fish in oxygenated water to markets for customers to choose the fish they want and haggle over the price before it is killed, gutted and cleaned for them to take home.

Condabilla has a purpose-built processing facility and fish are packed weekly.

They are transported to Nolan’s

Interstate Transport depot in Gatton each Thursday to be trucked to Sydney and Melbourne that night or early the next morning.

Lanh and Mark recently visited the Sydney Fish Market for its Monday auction where wholesalers bid for their produce, something Lanh describes as eye opening.

“The Sydney Fish Market is huge, clean and well organised and watching the auction was very interesting,” she tells me.

Condabilla Murray Cod can also be found at the Condamine Hotel, Toowoomba’s Stoney the Fishmonger and in selected restaurants across the Western Downs and in Brisbane.

The outlook is bright for Condabilla with Mark and Lanh focused on sustainably expanding production to meet the growing demand for Murray Cod, but as