Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i notice my fish eat less on a overcast day. dunno why.

maybe temp related, mine are a bit the same

I noticed something strange last night. I have one Tilapia by herself in a 10 gallon tank. She was the runt and I wanted to make sure she got fed. Anyway, I fed her and an hour or so later, I noticed that she was acting like she had a mouth full of eggs. I watched for a while, thinking that perhaps a large chunk of food had gotten stuck in her throat and she was trying to work it down. Finally curiousity got the better of me and I caught her and opened her mouth -- sure enough -- eggs. Unfortunately, all the activity made her spit out the eggs -- but now I'm wondering if the eggs could have been fertile. She's been away from the males for at least a month. Can Tilapia fertilize their own eggs?

Joel....

The female will not lay her eggs until the male is present. The male fertilizes them on the spot as she lays them and then she scoops them up in her mouth. She will then hold the eggs in her mouth for a week until they hatch. So the question is...

How long ago did you seperate her from the male?
Did you leave her in with her eggs after you caught her?
Did she scoop them back up?

Well, hate to contradict you Mike, but my female breeders have laid eggs with no male present. They hold them for a few days and then swallow them. They are not fertile. My girls live in a 50gal tank with a divider between them, and no other fish.

I think there are just time when they feel they must lay eggs.

hmmm, guess so. Maybe this was the case, but why would she spit them versus swallow them if they weren't fertilized? I did one time spot a female with eggs and removed her from the tank and isolated her, but nothing ever materialized.

Dunno, Mike. Maybe it was a carefully constructed plot to divert Joel. He was supposed to stop and eat the eggs himself, letting her flee to safety.

....although higher reasoning capacity is not a strong point in a creature with a brain the size of a pea.

Hey Joel, had an email from someone yesterday with a general question about AP and feeding the fish. He commented that "of course he couldn't possibly do AP, being in Alaska".. I pointed him to your thread here and evidently he's only about an hour and a half away from you. He was very happy to see it happening locally..

I'd be happy to communicate with him. He can PM me

Right, I have never seen my other females holding eggs except when with males. I thought perhaps there might be a hormone or chemical in the trout food I've been using that stimulated her to lay eggs.
I separated her from the male at least a month ago -- probably two months ago. After I looked in her mouth, I put her back in the tank. In her haste to escape from my groping hands, she must have spit out most of the eggs -- there were only a few in there when I finally caught her -- but enough to recognize them as eggs. The next morning she was ready to eat again.

My youngest daughter fed a whole container of flakes to the solo Tilapia. I had to put the fish in with the others and dump out the tank. it smelled vile. My freezer is holding several goldfish and has stopped leaking. And I figured out why my titanium heater wasn't working: a pleco (or something) chewed through the insulation and exposed the hot wire. it looked like mouse teeth marks but it has been constantly submerged. I got a shock when I stuck my hand in the water so it is amazing that the fish didn't get hurt.

Last weekend I put new plastic on my wife's greenhouse -- the first layer degraded from the UV and ripped to shreds in the wind.

Today I put up the second layer of hoops on the large greenhouse. It's looking quite nice. I'll try to put up some pictures in the next few days.

ems you got a shock because you were earthed, fishies were lucky like the bloke that is in the cherry picker working on power lines!
IMHO, not as a sparky

easy solutionL every time you have to put your hand in the water, jump off the ground!

Hmmm! Experiment Time!! Hold a 15 watt light bulb in your left hand and stick your right hand in to the water. Will the light bulb light up when you complete the circuit?