Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My wife and I are going to be building a Aquaponics system in the near future the question I have about the fish is this we are going to be using tilapia do they reproduce well in captivity

yes... A little too well...

there are some pretty good fish suppliers in ohio near you..
yellow perch do well with tilapia in polyculture..
i'm in northeast ohio... good luck!

They most certainly will breed in a tank environment. Tilapia have rapid growth rates if given high protein pellets. Thay can live in poor water quaility as where some fish can not and have a wide temp. acceptable range, but keep in mind they are still considered tropical fish. They breed most in warmer situations upper 80 to 90's (degrees) and some like the blue tilapia can tolerate down to 45, but that is not advised to introduce them to anything lower than 70.

i have clost to 150 yellow perch, a few bluegill, 5 or 6 blue tilapia, and 45 or so nile tilapia in my basement..
during our recent colder weather i lost 3 tilapia when the water was below 50.. i put a heater in the basement and it's been fine..
i know i had at least 3 hatches of tilapia last year.. a few from each hatch made it to the sump... the rest became food for the yellow perch, so right now i've only got 8 "baby" fish in a standalone tank..the bigger fish keep the babies under control with the benefit of a supplemental feed

These are helpful references I've found on tilapia:

http://aquaponicsinparadise.com/images/HatcheryManual.pdf

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/pdffiles/FA/FA01200.pdf

http://seagrant.uconn.edu/whatwedo/aquaculture/pdf/ncrac114_tilapia.pdf

http://www.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/BassTilapiaPolyculture.PDF

http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-12222003-115435/unrestricted/Paz_thesis.pdf

https://srac.tamu.edu/index.cfm/event/getFactSheet/whichfactsheet/52/

https://srac.tamu.edu/index.cfm/event/getFactSheet/whichfactsheet/53/

Lots of good reading

Thanks for all the replies from what i have been reading about Aquaponics it seems like a lot of work but yet vary rewarding once you have everything up and going we are vary anxious to begin we are not going to do this in ohio though we are actually going to do it on a property that is in Arizona on a 40 acre off grid property that we own we are going to dedicate aproxamitly 1/2 acre to 1 acre to this project so i will be asking a lot of probably stupid questions but the way i look at it is the only stupid question is the ones you do not ask