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Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on September 27, 2013 at 5:47pm

Dave good to hear from you. I was getting worried. Careful. Hate to be a wet blanket but I guess that is my lot in life. If possible find out if and how this stuff was used before. If these are scraps, how were they stored. You don't want to bring some chemical residue home by accident. Trust but verify. 

On a lighter note, I was digging through my "bone yard" today looking to discard all I could and found a bag and 1/2 of unused Hydroton.

SCORE!!!

Comment by Samson J. Loo on September 27, 2013 at 5:32pm

David I can use a 42" x 42" piece if you got it?

Comment by David Schwinghamer on September 27, 2013 at 5:28pm

Huge foam sale, name your price!

Comment by John Malone on September 26, 2013 at 10:21am

@ Dr. George

I very nearly built your egg incubator a little while back because it's so easy.

But that doesn't solve my 'no females' problem...  

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on September 26, 2013 at 10:07am

Just a thought. Back in the 90's when aquaculture was still strong, one farm was able to establish a display at the Az. State Fair for a number of years. I think we (collectively) are strong enough to do this again, this time using aquaponics. We have a year to prepare. Think about it.

P.S. One year in our display we had Tilapia, catfish and Macrobrachium. It was great till somebody stole the prawns 

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on September 25, 2013 at 5:42pm

If you ever want to artificially incubate your tilapia eggs, here is a paper that describes an easy method how. 

https://bitly.com/ZESh8I

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on September 25, 2013 at 3:54pm

Sheri I agree 100%. 

Comment by Sheri Schmeckpeper on September 25, 2013 at 11:12am

Dr.George, I've been thinking about your 95%, too, and have a theory...let me know if you think it makes sense or not:

Early on we would pull out the larger of the fry to sell and hold the smaller ones to "catch up." At that time we knew males grew faster than females, but the literature said that was because males don't carry the eggs (females don't eat while holding their eggs).

Over time we've realized that the males grow faster even as little bitty fry. The males are more aggressive, take more food, and the result is they grow faster. After only one month we can have fry from the same brood ranging from 1/2" to 1-1/2" in size. Now, there are more aggressive females and more passive males, but the males in a brood definitely grow at a faster rate, even when young.

I think it's very likely that you received mostly males because we selected fish from the largest part of the brood. That said, I'm happy that you're happy! In some environments, all males are the better choice.

Comment by Sheri Schmeckpeper on September 25, 2013 at 11:03am

John (and anyone else wanting to breed in your FT), I've been thinking about this in relationship with our observations, having been breeding these critters for 3 years now in a home environment.

There are good breeders and bad breeders. Some males build nests and forget to woo the girls. Some females swallow eggs or over/under protect their young. So, if you see aggression without apparent breeding, it could be a bad breeder or breeding that you never see the results from.

If you're sure there is not breeding, try removing the main culprit: the most aggressive fish. Let the 2nd in command take over because he may be productive. You can also try to pull the primary female, but they're harder to detect, particularly in an AP tank, and since a productive male will go to other females, a bad breeding female is not as likely to be the problem.

The second thing is finding fry. A brood of 600 fry can be eaten or pumped around without you ever knowing it. We've found a few 1-2 month old fry in our duckweed beds accidentally, never having seen the breeding or any other of the brood. The remaining 30 - 1000 fry were consumed or turned into fertilizer by the worms. Keep in mind that a newborn fry is the size of a little gnat.

So here's a thought: build a fry-catcher. This would be a tank or tray that your pump feeds (preferably one of the first in the line of water flow) that receives a moderate flow of water and is big enough to allow the water to slow down and settle with calm areas before draining into the sump, a growbed, or the FT.  Our Duckweed tray is a 2x4 hydro tray filled 4" deep.The water fills from the top on one end and flows out at the other end through a standpipe with a guard. With something like this, you might capture random fry, as we have done, that can be raised separately from the main tank until they're large enough to avoid the larger fish. We get about a dozen a year in there. If it were deeper and earlier in the water flow, I'm sure we'd get more. We've found a lot more fry in our trays than we ever found in the main tank.

Just something to think about...let me know what "all y'all" think!

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on September 24, 2013 at 7:39pm

Greetings. Guess we were just lucky to get the 95% male group.  Also trust me, male tilapia just fight anyway when stocked under a certain density. 

On a side note, though it got pretty beat up by the heat last week, my lettuce seems to be recovering. I think I can plant more now. As you see from the photo though, the Bok Choi never had a problem.

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