Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I built a 300 gallon aquaponic system and I am having trouble finding a source for tilapia. Every fish hatchery I have contacted only sells single sex populations or sells tilapia that are hybrids.

I am looking for fingerlings of mixed sex so that I can create a sustainable system. It seems that all the hatcheries are worried that I will try to compete with them or something. From what I understand tilapia eat very well and breed even better. Seems like the perfect solution for me where I live, we never get temps below freezing, the tilapia should breed like wild, which would allow me to maintain a truly sustainable system.

Any suggestions on a tilapia hatchery in the U.S. that will ship to Florida at a reasonable rate? I did find one place but he wanted $140 shipping and $10 a fingerling, which seems to be out of hand price wise for small fingerlings.

I contacted tilapia seed, but their response was to go cast a net literally as they don't ship mixed sex fish.

I shared a shipment from Miami Aquaculture with another forum member back in the day. Did you try them?

Contact Travis of www.fastonline.org He sells mixed sex for several varieties of tilapia. Shipping is a little pricey (I picked up 250 last week, but he is only 2.5 hours away...), but the cost of his fish is VERY reasonable!! 1" to 1.5" fingerlings were 50¢ each...

CB

BTW you should be able to find tilapia at almost any golf course in FLA right? (Watch out for gators!)

surely there are some fisheries near miami. Did you check the yellow pages?

A quick search came up with this one:
http://www.tilapiaseed.com/
It is on the other coast though. I'm sure you can find something closer.

Hi John, I emailed 'Morning Star Fishermen' a few months ago. I was looking for some 'breeders'. 1 male, 5 females. They were asking for $5 each. I didn't ask about fingerlings.

I haven't gotten there yet....the ones I have now, actually came from there. But, that's another story...
They are near Dade city ( I think ?) I was going to drive and make a 'day trip' out of it. Plus I was hoping they might show me a thing or two....like how to tell the sexes apart.

You can always do an internet search for them. They do have some classes too. I'd like to go to them...
Here's their email address....
msfmail@morningstarfishermen.org

'Some' places in FL won't sell to Fl residents, unless you have a commercial FL growers licenses.

Good luck John....

We ship White Brook strain White Nile Tilapia fry and fingerlings all over the US. If you have a hard time finding what you want locally, let us know, and we'll help you out.

Sexing is as simple as can be,

hold the fish by the back in your hand looking at the belly,

try not to be too obvious as bystanders might think you perverted,

males have ONE urigenital opening, and females have two,

thats the whole thing as simply as it can be said.

Put some rubber gloves on and check them out, start around 150 grams, you can get down to 100 gram size after practice.

Lots of US growers, check them out, one on this thread, if you want a boxfull of world class reds check out Sedi Eliyahu in Israel but there are good producers in the states. Buy local, support your local growers.

In most of Florida, only the Blue tilapia are legal without an aquaculture permit/license whatever. I know Miami Aquaculture has sold some of the Rocky Mountain Whites to some forum members but those members lived in PA where there isn't much chance of the fish escaping and becoming naturalized the way the Blue Tilapia already have here in Florida (which is why they have given up and allow people to keep the blues.)

Anyway, down there around Miami, you can easily support tilapia year round only needing to worry about protecting them from cold during the rare frost/freeze advisories you might get.

If anyone does sell and ship you anything but Blue Tilapia they should be clobbered. South Florida is horribly overrun by "escaped exotic pets" and it is rather amazing how well tilapia fry can travel. (as in a simple system overflow during a heavy rain event could easily infect the wild with more of them, this is how the blues escaped back in the 70's.)
Sorry, enough of the public service announcement.

So, if you want a mixed gender population of blues to get you going, Morning star fishermen can sell them to you. They charge a fair bit for the big ones that are sexed but if you just want a general starter population, they will sell small fish pretty cheap. Only drawback is they are not equipped to ship. You will have to drive there with a suitable container and battery powered aerator or inverter and aerator to get them home.

Then again, I know plenty of people who have started their Florida AP systems by netting tilapia out of canals.

Good Luck

p.s. by the way, most of those places that only want to sell the all male fish, well it isn't that they are hoarding or keeping the females to themselves (though the few breeders they have they probably wouldn't part with easily) it's that they feed all the fry on hormone laced feed to make them all develop as males since all the fish farms growing out tilapia commercially only want the males. All male populations of tilapia grow much faster and bigger, as soon as you throw a few females in, and they get into breeding, suddenly not as much energy goes into eating and growing and the farms production is in the can. So it isn't that they wouldn't sell you a mixed batch, they just are not set up to have mixed gender populations because their normal customers don't want that.

We have a very high quality pure blue tilapia (Oreochromis Aureus) line that we can ship to Florida if you have difficulty finding them locally.