Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So just to give a little background, I aquired 20 Tilapia fingerlings back in October, and have been raising them in a 55 gallon aquarium in my garage, and 16 have managed to survive. Back in January, I did a major water change to get rid of a massive algea bloom, and thats when I noticed the dominant males changing color (pink head and fins, no stripes), and the females started getting dark chins. I added some river rock to the aquarium, and 2 of the dominant males cleared all the rocks and set up nests on either side of the tank.


In the last 2 weeks, I have had 4 females successfully hatch 4 batches of fry (2 of them 2 weeks ago, 1 last week, and 1 last night). I would have had 5, but I moved the first female that had eggs in her mouth to soon, and she spat most of the eggs out and none hatched. The rest of the females I waited about ten days after they picked up the eggs to move them. I am guessing that each batch had about 80-100 fry. I put last night batch in a bucket first, took a picture, and counted about 100. There haven't been too many lost, so I am estimating I haveabout 300 - 400 fry are in seperate 20 gallon aquarium. The oldest ones are already about 1/2 inch long.

I still have 2 or 3 females that haven't mated yet, and I read that the other females will be able to lay eggs again after a month. I have already aquired another 50 g aquarium in anticipation of all the fry I will soon have. I will have to start making plans for some outside ponds to grow out all of these fish!

Yep, Tilapia have a habit of multiplying... rapidly...

Just because they have eggs does not mean they are the ones that actually mated. We have watched ours while they mated, and all the females run in to pick up the eggs. So even if one did the dead, the rest could have just stolen the eggs. We are trying to figure out which ones of ours actually mated and are going to try to isolate them and make them permanent breeders.

Well from what I have witnessed, the dominant male has only been letting one female at a time into the nest area, which is pretty much one half of the tank, and doesn't let anyone else cross that halfway point. You know right away when he is in the mood because he is one side, and all the other 15 are on the other side.

I got plenty video to prove it. The second those eggs hit the bottom the tank turns into a free for all. I know what you are talking about, he keeps all the other fish on the other side of the tank. It took us about 5 months to actually see the breeding take place, even though we had plenty of babies. One day you will see it happen.

Time for round 2.

After a couple of weeks with no new batches of fry, I came home yesterday to find one of the females with a "chin" full of eggs, and 2 dominant males are heavily "recruiting" on either side of the tank.

Time to get that 2nd 50 gallon tank fixed up, I am going to need it very soon.

Yeah we had three hatches lately. Not sure how many babies we have.

Just noticed a 2nd female with a chin.

Congrats!

So I moved the babys from the first months batches over to their new 50 gallon aquarium tonight. Final count was 256. I have had a lot of deaths the last couple of weeks, probably from the overcrowding in the 20 gallon tank, so I figure I had probably started with well over 300 fry.

girble
You could use many 50gl blue plastic drum and save $ also your breeders would have more room to move.
The drums could be cut on horizontal, not in half but just remove some of the top horizontal face so the drum doesn't distort it's shape.

Glad to hear you have breeding success sounds like your having a blast.
jim