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Comment by Shivanie Ramnarine on November 15, 2011 at 11:44am

Hi,

i am a new at this breeding tilapia stuff, i brought 20 fingerlings in july 2011, and i am seeing babies!!!!, problem is i have all the fishes in one 200 gal tuff tank will the bigger male and females eat them? what should i do?

 

Comment by Jon Parr on November 15, 2011 at 9:15am

True that, TC, but the fry that do hatch are small enough to get sucked through without a sponge filter. Trouble with sponge filters is that they have to be cleaned so frequently, daily once the fry are feeding. I isolate my brooding mothers to their own 20 gallon tank at day 6-7, that has nothing in it but a PVC pipe to hide in, and a small airstone. Make sure the PVC can't roll. I learned that the hard way. Often the mother will spit out some eggs and swim wildly, causing the pipe to steam-roll the eggs. Now I glue two pipes together side-by-side. After 4-5 days more, remove mother, and add a water pump (with a sponge filter) to a gowbed. I use 20 gallon GB's for each fry tank, displacing about 1/3 the FT water. They won't last long here, maybe two weeks, because they grow fast.

Jay, I haven't sexed my blues by physically looking at their junk. But they are easy to spot the difference once breeding behavior sets in. Soon I will need to pull a male blue out to join with mossambicus females, hoping for red male offspring. If I can, I'll snap a picture of male and female together. It may help to have an ID picture of each strain of tilapia.

Comment by Lonnie Kirkman on November 15, 2011 at 9:11am

Finally getting my levels under control making new bio filters seem to be working. I posted some more pic.on my page                                                                                               

Comment by TCLynx on November 15, 2011 at 5:45am

Since tilapia are mouth brooders, eggs that are left loose to get sucked through a pump are not likely to hatch anyway unless you are collecting them and setting up a hatching jar.

Comment by Conrad Chin-Yee on November 14, 2011 at 10:11pm

Just today I installed Hydro V sponge filters in three of my aquariums. One is a 20gallon, a 27 gallon rubbermaid container, and one in my 125 gallon aquarium. I also installed a whole-tank sponge filter in one end of the 125 G with two water pumps behind the sponge divider. Pumps draws water thru the sponge divider and returns water into the main tank. One of the pumps has an intake venturi that adds bubbles to the water stream. I opted for the sponge filters because the 125 G is a breeding tank, and eggs aren't supposed to be sucked into sponge. I didn't want to have any sort of over flow drain leading to some sort of filter as I didnt want to loose any eggs. Will have to wait to see if this final set up will work well.

Comment by Dave Lindstedt on November 14, 2011 at 9:48pm

I have had my fish 4 months this week they have more than doubled in size. I installed heaters about 2 weeks back and have noticed many of the fish have taken on a pinkish coloring.  I have only been able to positively identify about 3 or 4 as females.  I started with 220 fish and have lost about 40 to 50.  Largely because of high amonia build up in one or two aquariums.  I have since installed Aqua Clear filters with amonia filters.  I have a couple 70 GPH fountain pumps and I am considering builiding a filter using coffee filters to remove some of the solids in these aquairiums.  Any thoughts?  I just purchased 3, 250 gaallon tanks with a view to giving the fish more room and adding 1,008 sq.ft green house and 5 additional grow troughs.

Comment by Conrad Chin-Yee on November 14, 2011 at 9:23pm

One of my breeders has turned much more red than the others. I have noticed many have very red lips. I have noticed dorsal fin and tail becoming more red. A week ago I was concerned because some of them had red at the base of their lateral fins and also some red elsewhere like blood shot color, but that has cleared up.I have had a heater in the aquarium  now for 3 days heated to 85 degrees F. I noticed tonight that many of them are now going into their hutches in pairs. Hopefully the heating of the water and the extended hours of lighting is triggering mating behavior.

Comment by Jon Parr on November 14, 2011 at 6:03pm

Hello, Jay. I also have blues about five months old, and on my first batches of eggs. The breeding male will pale considerably, and will get pink or red on his tail and dorsal, and will definitely swim like he owns the tank. By black beard do you mean a throat swollen with eggs? I assume that's what your seeing. Oddly, my first girls to hold eggs are the smallest two fish of 25, only half the size or less than the biggest of them.

Comment by Larry Reinhardt on November 12, 2011 at 5:22am

My tilapia didn't spawn this summer, although I got a late start with them I felt they were certainly large enough. Yesterday I had my son catch 5 out of my 3,000 gallon FT - no easy task. When I flipped them over they were all males, they were 10" and above in length and were a lot more redish in body color than I remember from the ones I had in the 1990's. Now I'm thinking these were hybrids between 'Blue' and 'Nile' that I got from the breeder.

 

Sam was nice enough to share some of his fingerlings with me so that should fix things for next year.

 

Larry

 

Comment by Harold Sukhbir on November 11, 2011 at 9:45am

Yes I agree Dave this "sighting" method is not perfect, especially when the fish are younger. The few females left over after sexing remain significantly smaller as the fish grow and can be noticed more easily among the bigger males, making removal/separation easier, if that is the objective. Sexing this way stresses the fish and in the case of aquaponics is not mandatory.

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