Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I wanted to ask a question about Tilapia genetics . I know there are 3 basic tilapias that can crossbreed.

nilotica (nile) , aurea and mossambica.

A female O.nilotica +male aurea = mostly male offspring.
And, a female nile+male hornorum will be mostly male.

I know of a man that has a tilapia crossbred that is called "Cherrysnapper". The males are orange . If a female would show up she would be a different color.

He claimes to have an improved fillet size also. ??

I just found this big honkin African cichlid and wondered if a cross was possible .

The name is yellow bellied cichlid
(Boulengerochromis microlepis)
The descripion said that they can get 3 ft. long.

They are sold in the aquarium trade.

If a cross is possible then I might be able to get bigger fillets .
Filleting fish isn't my favorite. A 1 ft fillet might be worth it though.

We just pulled 15 nile out of the system and had a feed.

They sure taste better than the ones in the store.
I don't know where the market gets them but you can almost taste the mucky water they lived in.

So if anyone knows their biology and latin. Can you tell by the name if a cross is possible ?

I probably won't mess with crossbreeding but,It might be fun to try.

I've seen the cherrysnapper website and he want's bucks for his breeders but I didn't know they're offspring were sexlinks, may be worth it! Also may be possible to cross the ciclids, I don't know but synaptoman or chappo may.
Breeding for traits seems very interesting, Synaptoman harvests eggs, sterilizes the whole gammot. Send those guys a pm.

I don't think the "cherrysnapper" is actually sex-linked.
Sorry for coming across like that.

The breeders can be pinpointed for their chromosome structure though.

A good one to get in on this would be "badflash"

He (I know ) would talk circles around me on this fish.

Just read more on the giant yellowbelly cichlid.

Those buggars are aggressive predators.

They require a meaty diet and smaller tankmates will not be around for long.
Hmmmm , that could be a problem. ?

That should solve having runts in the tank.

I can see that maybe I might end up with one big fillet . or maybe two. fed on tankmates.

There goes a new and amazing aquaculture breakthrough.

There are dozens and dozens of tilapia cross combinations that will produce all or mostly male offspring. The problem for those in the US is that it's extremely difficult to find purebred tilapia stock for doing such a thing. At one time or another, most captive raised stock has been crossed, either intentionally or by accident.

Here are some results that have been reported in various studies involving the more common tilapia varieties.

O. niloticus male crossed with the following female:
O. aureus - 75-95% Male Offspring (Pruginin, 1967)
O . hornorum - 75% Male Offspring (Pruginin, 1967)

O. aureus male crossed with the following female:
O. niloticus (Stirling Strain) - 100% male offspring (Marengoni, 1998)
O. niloticus (Uganda Strain) 96-100% male offspring (Pruginin, 1975)
O. mossambicus - 100% male offspring (Beardmore, 2001)

O. mossambicus male crossed with O. aureus female - 89% male offspring (Pierce, 1980)


Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, there is very little chance for a small or backyard operator to obtain pure line stock. The very few pure lines that do exist in the US are not for sale to the public because of the value they represent to the owners who operate large hatcheries. These hatcheries produce all male tilapia seed (fry) stock for larger commercial growers. The growers buy new stock once to a dozens times per year from them, depending on climate and production schedule. Very few commercial tilapia growers breed their own stock because it is more efficient for them to focus purely on growing out fish and outsourcing the fry production to a large hatchery. If the hatcheries sold their parent stock (pure lines), they'd quickly lose a very major competitive advantage because any guy with a couple of stock tanks could start producing and selling the same seed stock as theirs.