Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Quick question regarding Tilapia.

I have been told that I can buy Red and Black Tilapia here in Cambodia. I haven't seen the fish for myself so I'm not sure exactly what it is I would be buying. I would like to breed them myself if possible and am wondering if I bred the black (males) with the red (females) would I get hybrids ? I want hybrid males to prevent them breeding of their own accord, plus it will be fun to try myself.

Do the colours vary greatly and there is no way to tell exactly which fish I'm getting until I can see them for myself?

They couldn't give me the answers in store as they do not stock them themselves but can source them from the farms.

Cheers guys!

Simon

There's no way to know what you are getting based on the information provided.

I wouldnt be terribly surprised if a "red" and a "black" tilapia were the same species, but they could also be different species or hybrids themselves.. Color is not a reliable way to determine species with tilapia as many species have been bred away from natural coloring for various reason.

brian

Cheers Brian.

I think I will just have to order a few of each in and see what I get, take a few pics and post on here to see if I can find out for sure.

I guess a better a better question is how to stop them breeding in your main system ?

Simon

Tilapia overproduction problems are way overblown.

How big is your fish tank? You may not be able to stop them from breeding but most aquaponics tanks are not very big, and without sufficient cover very very few tilapia fry will survive predation.

Just a few ideas if you are concerned for tilapia spawning behavior:

You could just sex every individual fish you have haha this is not 100% accurate nor practical when you have loads of fish however so I would not recommend for the non-experienced...

There are some tilapia farms that have broodstock that produce >96% males. So that could be an option.

Perhaps put in some sock nets on the pipe that puts water into your growbeds to catch any fry...

Add a few fish that tend to be more piscivorous to your fish tank i.e. bass, perch etc..

Tank will be at least 1000L but that's yet to be determined, it could be larger. I'm trying to get things organised before I set anything up.

I guess if you notice a female has eggs you can just net them out of the main tank and put her in a smaller tank until she spits the fry out?

I found an article: http://aqua.ucdavis.edu/DatabaseRoot/pdf/280FS.PDF

It states that Tilapia suitable for mixed-sex culture are T. Aurea, T. nilotica and their hybrids as they reproduce at an age of 5 to 6 months. So it sounds like if you have either of those you need not worry anyway. Would people generally agree with that?

Cheers!

Simon

Ah 1EyedTuna you posted a moment before me

Being in Cambodia i'm not sure where to source from a breeder that could get me male hybrids, it would have to be overseas. Plus I don't want to rely on somebody else to supply them when they breed readily.

I think I read somewhere that farmers in Asia use catfish or snake heads to control stock numbers, I could get those easily so that's an option.

Cheers!

Simon

You won't have to worry if you harvest them before they are sexually mature for obvious reasons. Although, typically you might want to grow them out longer than just 5-6 months to get larger fillets out of them... closer to 9 months typically.

Yes, if you notice the female is holding you have two options if you wanted to intervene and prevent her from spitting in the tank.

1.) Place her in another tank separate from the system. Let her spit the fry when she is ready.
2.) You can strip the female. Meaning induce her to spit the eggs/fry manually.

--> either case you can raise the eggs or fry up to sell or stock your own tanks in the future with if you like.

If you would like more information on the stripping I will try and put up a DIY same for the raising of the fry or artificially hatching of the eggs.

Will some species reach maturity within 2 to 3 months?



That would be great !

Cheers

Simon

Honestly I am not 100% sure when they reach sexual maturity. I have not had direct experience with tilapia.. However, I have had tons of experience with other fish species. So I can't answer your question...

Although with some experience I have had with African Cichlids (which tilapia are an African Cichlid) I have found that you can actually get a fish of a very small size to spawn (~2" I have seen). Now a fish of that small size wont be producing many eggs and are hardly a worry of polluting your tanks with fry haha Now if that is true for tilapia, I can't say for a fact that it is. But I wouldn't be surprised if it could happen so long as they are getting a good diet and the environmental conditions are right.

On the other info, I will try and get that together and put up a new post for the fry info/stripping of eggs... I just need to get some more free time and Ill get it together for you and whoever would like to learn how I do it haha

I'm sure I have read that they can start breeding at small size and quite early on, depending on species.





No doubt that would be useful to a few people, cheers mate !

Simon

You should also read other threads that already exist on this topic, here's one that i recall because i posted on it but there are probably hundreds now.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20111

I have read through a lot of what I could find on the site already and did look at that thread. To be honest I forgot how much info you had posted there.

The reason I started another thread was in regards to my particular situation with the two possible species I can source here.

Cheers !