Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have searched the boards and read FISH FARMING AT HOME FOR FUN AND PROFIT looking for the answer and I'm pretty sure I have an idea of what the answer will be just looking to confirm. I will be setting up and IBC AP system using talapia, my question is will they breed on their own in the main tank or will they need to be seperated into a smaller tank and the fry taken care of through that route? From reading the book and going through the boards it appears the answer to the first part of my question is no.Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

I dont know much about Talapia but I think you would need to remove fry so they are not eaten by the larger fish.

from my reading on talapia (I am by no means an expert lol) it appears that the larger fish do not eat the younger fish this is only a concern when talapia are smaller

The larger tilapia do not eat the fry (babies) but the young ones will eat fry. So if you have a spawn and you have some that are a inch long the inch long ones will eat all the fry.

I'm not really worried about losing some fry but would be looking at just maintaing stock throughout the year as simple as possible, obviously just lettign them breed in the tank on their own would be nice and simple, just looking to see if it can be done or if it will require me setting up a breeding tank to get them to breed

I have some breeder tanks (2 55 gallon aquariums) in my house. You can just keep at least 3 females and 1 male inside and let them breed.

I had the same question but looking for the opposite answer, this is, I don't want them to breed. I'm worried about a tank of Talapia breeding out of control. 25 fish, then 75, then 150, then .....

25 will turn into over 500 in one hatching. But the good thing is they can be used to feed other things. Chickens, bass, ducks, everything eats little tilapia.

If you want to control Tilapia numbers just add other type of fish that eat the tilapia fry.

Cheers,
JoaoA

so it is looking more likely that it is indeed possible for talapia to breed inside the tank without any outside involvement from me short of providing the correct environment

It is harder to stop them from breeding than to make the breed.

lol hmm too much fish to eat that would be an interesting problem to have

It isn't to much fish to eat, it is too many fish for the system to handle till they are big enough to eat.

yeah I suppose that would cause an issue