Pond Boss Forums POND CONSTRUCTION Creating habitat A safe house for fry

I was looking at a Tilapia supplier, Lakeway Tilapia, and they sell pond grade tilapia just for eating pond algae.

Pond Grade™
Pond grade are specifically selected for use as algae control in open water ponds and lakes. These tilapia are not recommended for food production or aquaponics systems. Their smaller size and slower growth rate means that nuisance vegetation such as algae, water meal and duckweed will remain as their primary dietary choice for much longer. We recommend 1000 pond grade tilapia per surface acre for algae eradication. If you intend to stock tilapia for the purpose of sport fishing, we recommended that you select our un-graded tilapia instead.

Pond grade Blue tilapia with free shipping
Expect an average fish length of under ½ of an inch.

They get $116 delivered for 100 fish.

But these are just the small guys, haven't found a live supplier for the larger fish.

Another option would be to buy a breeding colony. Keep the breeders in the cage and let their spawn get out of the mesh and either eat algae or be eaten. At least at the end of the year I could move the breeding colony indoors and use them the next year. I wonder how long they live, and breed.

Pure strain Blue tilapia breeding colonies
A blue tilapia breeding colony is more of a service than a product. After all, the fish themselves are only worth $2 each and shipping is included in the price. So what are you paying for? Well, you are paying for us to raise tilapia fingerlings for several weeks to juvenile size then sexing those fish and putting them together to form a breeding colony. But we don't stop there.

We carefully observe your colony for a few more days to ensure that they all display breeding behavior. We make sure that your male is aggressive and that your females aren't. An alpha female or wimpy male will ruin a colony so if necessary we will continue to swap out members of your colony until were absolutely satisfied that you have an actively breeding colony. All of our breeding colonies consist of one male and five females.

The prices below include free shipping $279

The second option may be the best, they would likely produce 100 fry or more in a 3 to 4 month season where the water remains above 60ºF and when they slow down as the water cools they won't be too big for any of the resident predators to eat. Maybe they will come and go to the safe house cage but the breeding adults will be confined. And if I get 2 breeding years out of them I should be happy. If not we get to eat the pets!