Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Does anyone know what a supermale is good for ?

From what I understand :

A female nile tilapia and a male aurea tilapia will get you all male hybrids.

Also: a female nile and a male hornorum will also get you all male hybrids.

I have noticed a website featuring a " cherrysnapper " hybrid .
This is a red nile ? and a black hornorum .

The male is " supermale " ? I am a little confused to what a supermale is supposed to be though.

I have looked at the "cherrysnapper " site by Mike Sipe and it does appear that his supermale does improve fillet size.

Has any members here had any experience with Supermales or cherrysnapper tilapia.

At this time I have nile and aurea cross . I believe this is called a Rocky Mtn. white.

It is probably my favorite hybrid.

There is also another tilapia - O. mossambica but I do not hear of anyone using them for hybrid crosses.

I don't know much about the specifics but I think the benefits to using the cross from the cherrysnapper is that the genders from the cross are color coded (as in if a stray female shows up, it will be the wrong color and easier to weed out.)

The cross between the nile and aurea does not reliably produce all males. There appears to be only one strain of aureas that produce all male offspring when crossed with niles or mossambica. It is an Israeli strain and not available in the US.

There are two types of supermales that I know of. One is a YY male that can be created several ways. None of them are simple and involve some pretty high tech or chemical processes. When crossed with a XX female all the fry and genetically XY, but not always males.

The other is the natural supermale that uses a different sex system using WZ chromosomes. The Males are ZZ and the females are WZ. When crossed with XX females will give you ZX offspring, which are also genetically male. The difference is one is a natural product, and the other is a frankenfish. I have no problem with frankenfish, but lots of people do.

I have the black T. horonorum O. mossambica cross. The O. mossambica breed all the time, so you get loads of fry. The hybrid process produces a very robust hybrid that grows faster and larger than either of the parents, and the T. horonorum get pretty big. Mike sipe has bred them for improved fillet yeild, and most of the improvement passes on to the hybrid. They do not produce all male offspring (only about 85%+), but the females will grow larger and faster than a normal nile tilapia male if they are not allow to brood fry. If you grow them out in cages that have no access to a flat bottom, they rarely breed. You have to keep an eye on the cages though as leaves, or even a dead fish can provide a flat surface.

Cages also allow you to co-crop things like shrimp or crayfish as they don't have access to each other.

I have a Rockymoutain Whites also. I recently crossed it with a O.mossombica, and have an abundance of fry. You can cross any species in the genus Oreochrmois...mossombica, horonum, nilotica, et..

Don
tilapiahybridpair.com