Pond Boss Forums STOCKING A NEW POND Types of fish to choose Looking for stocking advice

Customers that I know with swimming ponds have never complained of the tilapia bothering swimmers. Tilpaia tend to be more shy than BG. There are several places in Ohio that sell them depending on your location. Tilapia do not survive in regular outdoor ponds during Ohio winters which can be a very good thing because they will never over populate a pond and denude it of plants nor make the pond muddy by searching in the sediments for food. Sometimes when the goals change for the pond, it is very hard to get all the stocked fish of one species out. Not the case with tilapia, you can add more or less each year based on the pond conditions and need for algae control. What other type of plant - algae control management can you use where you can then eat the management method at the end of the year. You can't eat algacides nor any herbicide. Plus all the small tilapia that consumed algae all summer long will when dying feed the predator fish.

When most edible plants are gone the tilapia will eat some of the organic sediments to get the bacteria attached to the organics. Tilapia have the ability to digest many different things that serve them as food.

The main disadvantage is that in pond with LMB you have to allow for bass predation of the stocked and new young tilapia. With LMB one usually needs to stock larger tilapia and often more tilapia because bass are eating either the stockers or lot of the baby tilapia. Baby tilapia are the main algae eating army.