Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've found this document on the net that gives you a lot of details on the incubators for Tilapia, have a look from page 60 of the document.
It also says that the incubator works much better with a rounded bottom.
Actually this says another thing that is the contrary to what I had seen working on a farm, the upwelling system isn't the best... So I don't really know what to say. They seem to say that the best technique is to use a downflow in a rounded bottom bottle, the flow must very slow so that it moves the eggs without taking them up to the overflow. Anyway this document has photos in it and I suppose you get a better idea by having a look at it.
http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-0 ... thesis.pdf
Good luck

Bridal tule or some other sort of open-weave material might work -- failing that, McMasterCarr sells small pieces of stainless mesh in different sizes.

ooops. Momma lost the eggs. I guess I have to be patient and see if she'll spawn again.

Bad luck this time, hopefully next time will be the one :crossed fingers:
Do you condition up the genitor fish with varied food or only fish food?
What could have changed in her environnement to make her loose her eggs?
Two reasons for these questions:
- are the eggs good for hatching, if not the female eats them to get back the energy she spent spawning. It is proven that genitor fish eat has a high impact on the quality of the eggs and fry. Skretting has developped a special fish food for genitor fish in hatcheries because of this.
- did she find that the environnement (tank, human passage, water quality) was not suitable for breeding, if not the female eats her eggs to save energy.
I'm sure you thought of these questions but writing them on the forum might get somebody more expert to answer.

Hi Amacafish,
I don't feed the fish anything special for breeding, but maybe could get some conditioning feed or some nice meal worms. I was also thinking that next time I could remove the other fish so she would have privacy. Water quality is fine. I tried to keep the kids out of the room, but it's possible that activity disturbed her, too.

Hi JP

I have noticed that the food is very important for the survival of the fry and the eggs, I've had a few aquarium fish spawns that were no good because of me using only commercial pelleted fish food.

Now I feed at least for 3 weeks prior spawning with a mix of food, good and the newest possible fish food, frozen bloodworms or fairy shrimp, and a veggie mix for the vegetarian or omnivorous fish.

I also add some vitamins to the frozen blood worms by leaving them soak in a rich vitamin solution. Don't give blood worms to cichlids it gives them a fatty liver and can eventually shorten there life and gives a poor egg quality.

You could do a mix for tilapia (fresh or frozen) with mussel, fish flesh and skin (or fish food), worms, and veggies or greens, and add a vitamine mix and maybe a micro drop of seasol to get the trace element and minerals. Otherwise you could use spirulina for all the vitamins, trace elements and minerals, it could be even better if you have some.

You could also give them feeder fish or fairy shrimp or shrimp that have been soaked in a vitamin dilution, just be cautious with diseases you could bring into your fish tanks, it wouldn't be a problem before spawning but after when the parents are tired and their immune system is low.

Skretting uses a lot of squid in there conditionning fish food for broodstock, there must be a reason but I don't know it. They have developped this feed to help hatcheries with water quality management and regularity of egg quality, since they control the breeding phases with light lengh and temperature increase to produce fingerling all year.
They usually gave frozen fish fillets and mussels that pollute the water to fast and are not the same year around.
But I don't know if you could find this fish food in the States actually and be carefull that live food or frozen mixes will pollute more your water than fish food.
To resume this long post, the more natural the food is, the more eggs and fry you get, how surprising??

A thing is to partially or fully cover the tank, depends on the curiousity of the fish.
I have some who I had covered for spawning and who spent their time watching what was happening by a small hole in the cover.
Usually in hatcheries the rule is the less noise and passage possible.

I thought of another reason possible for the egg problem
Is this spawn the first one of this female?
If it is, it is not surprising that it didn't go to it's term, usually the first is not great if it works, it takes 3 or 4 spawns to start getting the best eggs out of a female.

I hope all these infos will interest you and help you for the next time.

Hi Amacafish,
To my knowledge, this is the female's first spawn, but if she tried to spawn in the grow-out tank, I would not have known it. My fish are just over 1 year old.

The tank is covered on top and on three sides. It is positioned so that people passing in the next room are not visible, but little dancers do shake the floor. There's only so much I can do about that.

I will have to think about some homemade food...too bad it is winter. I could feed them out of the vegetable garden. I will look to see what goodies I can get. Maybe frozen peas or frozen shrimp. I have some seaweed for human consumption, too. I will get creative.

Thanks Amacafish!

Then keep them dancing all the time so that there no peaks in the ambient noise...
To be serious as long as the fish is used to regular and similar noise it will cope with it no problem. All the infos I give are based on difficult aquarium fish spawning, I even have some infos on recreating the monsoonal storms with the flashing lights, the tin foil crashes and all but I don't think that you'll need them yet, maybe if you get onto Pacu.

Good luck and why not showing us the fishie that we have been talking for 15 pages of forum. Let us know who the star is!
I don't need to be thanked as I have learned more from all the infos you've left on the forum than what I gave you, maybe one day if you can't get to the internet i might catch up, but you should be stopped for a year or so, at the least.

Pics of the fish. The pic with several fish around the blue bowl and the pic of a momma with fry are from about 8 months ago when they were much younger and some spawned for me as very young adults.

The last pic with just 2 fish is from today. Sorry the glass is dirty. I didn't want to scape the algae off because fry like to nibble on that.

Thank you
They are very pretty and have nice natural colors.

My female now has a mouthful of eggs -- three days after the male left -- domestic violence....

I suppose that a couple only of fish doesn't dilute enough the males aggressivity. Hope this will be good and will give lots of fry.

I suppose I could try putting two males in the tank with her -- that way maybe the males would attack eachother and leave her alone.

That would stress more the female because one would want her to keep his eggs and the other would try to have her to spit so that she would be sooner ready for a spawn with him. I think that Tilapia are good harem fish, put a few females and one male in a big tank so that he has his aggressivity diluted between all the females and each female has a small territory in the male territory.
Good luck with the fishies

This is a good thread.
About shipping eggs fish (posted else where but I though the info would be good here).



Cost $14.69 for 16 oz which treats 400 gallons.

When I get my fish breeding I would like to see how far they can be shipped.