Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

They are substrate breeders and yes they are aggressive. I never got them to breed simply because they required much more space. Mouth brooders and do it in the backseat so to speak....sorry but that's about the best way to describe the difference. If they can get you Nile....then I say go for it

I saw a buttikoferi in the store that was about 8-9 inches and well filled-out. He was also dismantling the tank of course, but gosh was he beautiful! I touched base with the owner, and she has started the quest with red Mozambiques as my first choice.

cool, yea the BK's get big, much bigger than the others actually, just not as efficient in tank culture as the nile or hybrids... I wish I could get reds here. I'm lucky to have what I do. Please keep the thread posted when you get your tilapia.

I wonder if we could overnight fry to each other within the States? During Spring or Fall, maybe? I recall seeing tablets for sale that are used to increase oxygen and reduce shipping stress when added to the bag. If I manage to get reds, maybe we could try it.

Ah ha! just answered my own question on temperature slowing down breeding. I thought it should, and it does:

Tilapia generally stop feeding when water temperature falls below 63o F. Disease-induced mortality after handling seriously constrains sampling, harvest and transport below 65o F. Reproduction is best at water temperatures higher than 80o F and does not occur below 68o F. In subtropical regions with a cool season, the number of fry produced will decrease when daily water temperature averages less than 75o F. After 16- to 20- day spawning cycles with 1/2-pound Nile tilapia, fry recovery was about 600 fry per female brooder at a water temperature of 82o F, but only 250 fry per female at 75o F. Optimal water temperature for tilapia growth is about 85 to 88o F. Growth at this optimal temperature is typically three times greater than at 72o F.

Full text and a very nice discourse on lifecycle etc. http://www.thefishsite.com/articles/58/ ... nd-biology

Thanks for the link....that is good info for us tilapia raisers.

You guys trying to swap fish or recipes LOL

Or is this an American style of an all night long BBQ

Janet I would love to swap fry with someone else... Let me know when you get your Tilapia and if you get reds I would most definately be interested....... I need an alternate gene pool to pull from to reduce inbreeding....

gee MF, don't you want fish with an extra tail?

Only if you are willing to catch the buggers as they are alreday too fast...two tails would be super fast

I was doing a little research on packing them and shipping. It doesn't sound hard...styrofoam box, 25% water in each bag, don't feed fish for 36-48 hours before shipping, use Jungle Bag Buddies, and pack very few fish in each bag. Shipping costs will be a bit, maybe $50-100, but I think if we're shipping fry, we could probably get 20+ in a modest-sized box.

Woohoo! Anybody else in on the plot? Now, if only I had my reds!

Waaaaiiitt a minute....Joyce, what kind of tilapia do you have?

Rupert, you are too funny!

Janet its best to get good breeding stock as all your other fish will be coming from these.

And a red fish will sell better that a gray fish any day

These fish did come from Florida Mike

After 3 generations the fish (anything) are considered "pure"

Too reduce inbreeding you should use the same breeders for as long as you can. That way you will be crossing bro and sis much less

eg. If you use new breeders Evey gen you will be crossing bor and sis every gen. if you use new breeders when the old ones die you will be crossing bor and sis every 11 or 12 gen. Hope you understand what i am saying.

AS for not breeding for disease resistance, low DO tolerance, or other traits that make Tilapia a good tank culture fish if you noticed he turn round and cross the reds back to a Nile and call them "penny fish"

As for all males i think this happens because the Nile Fry are feed hormones to make them males even if there were females thus giving them a genetic make up that only produces males.

Janet you studied Mendel's work?

Mendel is my hero.

CG, I think you have a good point about trying to avoid regular breeding of brother and sister. (There's actually a very good Children's Hospital near here that exists because a particular well-known family kept things a little too much inside the family. Ick!) Limited crossing of siblings or offspring/parent is done in animal breeding to try to fix a desired trait, but you have to be careful. That's why bloodlines are tracked carefully by various dog/horse breeders.

There are several ways of getting all-male populations in Tilapia. One is to hand-pick through them. One is to hit them with hormones. The last (and the one I was hoping to try) is to create very specific hybrids.

Hybridization does funny things. Hybrids are quite often more vigorous individuals than either of the parents. So F1 (first generation) hybrids can be quite desireable. However, there can be negatives, too. Sometimes fertility is unaffected, but sometimes it creates sterile offspring, and sometimes it messes with gender distribution. That last was the convenient little side-effect that I wanted to take advantage of. If hybrids are fertile, they do not breed true in the F2 generation. F2 will show variations of the original (F0) stock's characteristics. Perhaps by F3 the variations will even out to become "pure", but it is a 'brand new' pure--it is not pure like either of the F0 grandparents was.

Sooo.... given a pure Nile or Moz female and a pure Blue or hornorum male, the resulting F1 offspring should be all male because of the oddities in that particular hybridization. No hormones added. The tough part is the word 'pure'.

There I go....rambling on about genetics. Probably best not to get me started....mumble mumble mumble.

I definately keep my brood stock separate and preserved (so to speak), but it requires space so I have to put the male and females together while the fingerlings and fry grow out.... once the fry have reached fingerling stage I can put them in with the older fingerlings without the concern of cannabalism.

But by that time, my females are holding a NEW CLUTCH ...haha, and so I am on my third batch of fry being fed back into the growout tank. Some survive still and it's getting muddy the generations in the same tank.

Hey Mike, have you tried cooling down the breeder tank when you don't want fry? I'd love to know how well that works.