Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Tilapia vs. Game Fish Chow

Would like to get some advice here. I'll try to make this short.

4 acre pond makeover this year. Took out 252 12-14" stunted bass going from one every cast to not catching anything. But Im happy with that. Im introducing fresh Florida genetics in hopes to start this little lake over the best I can without draining. I added 1000 3-6" CNBG and 60-lbs Tilapia this year and fed almost everyday to try to strengthen my forage. Now I have literally tons of 6" BG and CNBG.

I am moving on to a 7 acre lake next year and am allocating most off my funds to getting it revamped. I key here is not to abandon the 4 acre lake. I will be watching it closely and keeping catch logs. Tagging the new Floridas and monitoring Wr of next year's harvest.

As stated above I will be using the majority of my funds next year on the 7 acre lake and don't think I can Feed and add 60-lbs of Tilapia to the 4 acre lake.

It amounts to about $500 either in Tilapia or Game Fish Chow (20 bags) for the 4 acre pond. No fertilization here btw untill the moss is totally under control.

Should I do both just less of both or no tilapia and just pour the feed to the CNBG. Feed seems the smart and most beneficial thing but thought I'd get some opinions.

Goal is to try to grow some good size bass.

I would think it could still be beneficial to add tilapia even if you add less as from what I gather they are breeding machines.

If it were me, id cut my tilapia numbers and still feed.

We will see what the experts say though.

If what your saying is cut the tilapia or feed, I would cut the feed no question. The amount of biomass added on your bass by tilapia will be much greater than 20 bags of feed. At least thats how I see it going down.

A 1000 lbs of feed will provide up to 500 lbs of fish growth. To get that same amount of growth from the Tilapia you would need to produce 5000 lbs and I doubt that is possible.

I'd ddefinately add some, if not all tilapia, and see if I could feed some GFC to help the CNBG. The Tilapia should help keep the algae under control and provide feed for the LMB, while the pellets will help the CNBG grow and prosper & they will feed the LMB while the Tilapia die off for the winter.

More info needed.

Do you really need to do anything? It sounds like, to me, that you have sweated and created a balanced 4 acre pond. Am I right?

I think I would pour my available funds into moss control. How bad is the moss and what kind is it? How extensive is it?

Although Chris is right about feed conversion, I like the tilapia because they feed the entire range of the forage base across the entire pond.

Wow, excellent topic.

One question and one suggestion.

Did the tilapia you added this year seem to have any impact on the moss? If so, then it might be best to focus on them, especially if you can get your supplier to give you exclusively 1/2-1# fish that are in the prime of growing and breeding.

How about using a cheap feed, such as generic "catfish food" from the local coop, to cut feed costs, but still allow some feeding? BG can do fairly well on a less expensive food, if your goal is primarily to grow them for bass forage, and at least in our area it's quite dramatically cheaper than the good stuff. Your BG will definitely grow and produce best with some added forage.

And probably the most important thing is just not to get so busy that you can't keep hammering the LMB...it sounds like you've done a great job thusfar, but this time next year, if you don't keep pounding them, you'll have a pond full of 6-9" bass that are eating tons of YOY BG and restarting the old cycle.

Here's my spin.
Game Fish Chow should not cost $25 per bag. You are overpaying. You can get AquaMax for $25 per bag and it's a better deal for bluegill, anyway.
Since you are de-emphasizing the 4 acre pond, leave the vegetation alone (unless it's all algae, which I doubt). Since your mission is to grow larger bass and the food chain had been depleted, heavy mats of vegetation, for the next two years, is your friend, unless it covers more than 30% of your pond's floor. Heavy vegetation is great cover for small fish. So, in your case, mats of plants could be the stimulus package to bring your bluegill out of bankruptcy into an honest-to-gosh food chain. Essentially, right now the heavy mats of plants are habitat, not a nuisance. It becomes a nuisance if there's too much coverage or your lake is otherwise balanced and ready for fishing.
While tilapia would definitely be an added benefit, if you must choose, I would choose feeding.

Now that you will be working on 2 ponds instead of one, use that as a bargaining tool with whoever you buy your tilapia and gamefish chow from. If tilapia and gamefish chow are in the plan for your 7 acre pond as well, come up with your combined budget for both ponds and negotiate a deal with your supplier! I dont know what you do for a living, but you may just have some sort of bargaining tool at your disposal that would be an asset to the fish guy?

If tilapia helped in your algae control this year, it would be hard to give that up, even if gamefish chow would add more biomass. On the other hand, with so many 6" CNBG and BG, it would be a shame to stop feeding them if growing big bluegills was part of your goal. They are just so close to being nice fish, but possibly too many of them for the pond to support naturally.

One last suggestion would be to start with a much slower approach with the 7 acre pond and really make the 4 acre pond something special. Your on the verge of something great with that 4 acre pond, something that will blow your mind with awesomeness, but sharing funds with that 7 acre pond is just going to make 2 slightly above average ponds, rather than one world class pond!

Ok I know, this is really my last suggestion, but why not simply take a more natural approach (virtually free) to start managing the 7 acre pond by manipulating the population to what you want it to be, and then spend funds on it in the next season to enhance what you already started. Basically what i am getting at is you could possibly regret skimping on your first project, once you have already started it. Dont spread yourself thin.

Should have asked. How much "moss" cover are you dealing with? Any idea what it is?

I think this is doable with a little outside of the box approach. Good suggestions so far so I won't repeat them.

Focus on timing. It is not an all or none approach with feeding or tilapia. In short I would feed in late winter early spring to get the BG up to their best condition for spawning. Then cut back some on the feeding. This will occur before it is warm enough for adding the tilapia. Then add tilapia later when the water temps get high enough. I would add less tilapia but put some in a protected area (blocking net or cages) and move them to the bigger pond as warranted. Make a budget using the suggestions about food types and discounts , $ for fish purchase etc all for both lakes. Be ready to reduce LMB #s in the 4 acre lake. A low dose of fertilizer may help provided it will not make the moss problem much worse. I suspect you will see this year some changes in your fish population as I bet last year you were above carrying capacity by the time the tilapia died. You may not need or want as many this year as there will not be enough room for them with all the larger surviving BG from last year.

Seems like you guys are a little split on the decision. Im suprised. I was already thinking about Chris's statement on feeding and trying to get tilapia to produce enough to equate that 500 lb number. Thats why I was just leaning on feeding.

Lets see.

Dave,
Yeah we've done the work on harvesting. Balanced? I don't know yet, but its sure hard to catch a fish now after taking out 252.

Moss = Coontail. Probably 75% bottom coverage. I dumped in 30 Grass Carp this spring to work on that. I think it was 30...

Bob Lusk,
I am paying right at $25 bag for Game fish chow. If I could get it cheaper that would help a lot.

n8ly,
Might be able to get a better deal on fish food as stated above, but don't know about the Tilapia. Paying $8 lb with Overton, that was his economic stimilus package this year. Good deal but it still hits hard on people like me that buy lots, I think i bought 96 lbs this year total.
Don't really have much problem with algae so hard to answer that question. Also being that I added 1000 3-6 CNBG and 60lbs tilapia at the same time, it is also hard to tell which helped the most. I do know the pond has lots and lots of Adult BG running everywhere for next years spawn.

Don't worry im not going to quit on it just need to allocate funds around. I will being doing a normal harvest next spring and seeing what progress I've made.

On the 7 acre pond, it wasn't as overpopulated to begin with as this 4 acre pond i've been working on. But it has an extremly weak forage bass of BG. Im thinking about dropping in 1000 CNBG 3-6" next spring immediatly. I have already taken out 20 lbs to the acre of bass to the acre, added Grass Carp and will be dumping in structure here shortly. I want to put in Florida bass genetics here to and will be feeding and adding Tilapia EVERY year on this one. Planning on 70-lbs Tilapia in this lake. The best thing here is the majority of this pond is deep and looks like it will be an excellent candidate for Fertilization. Im planning on just making this a healthy "Balanced" bass fishery. I bet with CNBG, tilapia, feeding, Florida genetics, and Fertilization additions next year it will surely produce some good fish in the years to come just being in "balance".

Ok... Thats why I brought this up. Large ponds = $$$. I need to use $$$ wisely.

I wouldnt say really anyone is too split on the decision, just giving you as many angles and ideas to work with as possible.

I agree with n8ly same concepts just different angles.

Is there any research on how many pounds of tilapia one pound of tilapia can produce in an eight month growing season?

james, I think it's not strictly how much forage will be produced, it's also dependant on how many of the babies will be eaten.

CZ71, you don't have enough dollar signs posted.

Nor have I ever really figured out what "wisely" means.

James, thats a good question, seems like Overton had a post here one time putting up a huge number of fish per acre that he grew on his farm. don't quote me but it was something like he started with 20-lbs or brooders and ended up with eihter 2000 or 5000lbs of fish at the end of the year.

Although in a pond with predators, BG and bass, i don't see how tilapia could even get close to that number simply because the majority of the young are eaten when they are less than an inch long. I witnessed this over and over again. BG were the biggest consumer of young tilapia. As soon as the female spit them out it was murder. Pretty fun to watch though.

As far as the original question was concerned, I think the Tilapia was a great idea to help get my BG population up and thriving again. But now it seems that if I can feed all different sizes of pellets throughout the year next year, that might be the best bang for the buck as far as pound for pound.

Now as for the 7 acre pond, I believe Tilapia will benefit it to a higher degree simply due to fertilization. I have 1.5 acres of water dedicated to growing my florida bass which was stocked with 20lbs tilapia per acre, minnows, cnbg, and fertilized. I can easily say the tilapia produced many times more than they did in the unfertilized 4 acre lake.

Yes but it depends on many factors. They are grown commercially overseas for food production. I can check the #s but this should provide a clue - in some cases commercial fish farms can produce over 10,000 lbs per acre yearly. IIRC I saw one source noting 23,000 lbs per acre.

From SARC

Under good growth conditions,
1-gram fish are cultured in nursery
ponds to 1 to 2 ounces (20 to 40
grams) in 5 to 8 weeks and then
restocked into growout ponds. In
monosex growout ponds under
good temperature regimes, males
generally reach a weight of 1/2
pound (200 + grams) in 3 to 4
months, 1 pound (400 + grams) in
5 to 6 months, and 1.5 pounds (700
grams) in 8 to 9 months. To produce
1-pound (400- to 500-gram) fish,
common practice is to stock 6,000 to
8,000 males per acre in static water
ponds with aeration or 20,000 to
28,000 males per acre where 20 percent
daily water exchange is economically
practical. After 6 months
of feeding with good quality feeds,
such ponds can produce 5,000 to
7,000 pounds per acre and 18,000 to
20,000 pounds per acre, respectively.

Seems like you might want to consider threadfin shad and fertilation in the bigger lake. If you are far enough south, they should overwinter and you could avoid the annual stocking costs of tilapia. As a bonus, you get the great topwater bite with having shad.

Thought about the Shad and Shiners because i am planning to fertilize and because the lake has a lot of deeper waters. How many adult shad would I need to stock to get a good sustaining population? Any idea on the cost? I guess I need to ask Todd O or something.

I shy away though at the thought of the shad and shiners not taking on and it being a waste. I seem to read more failures than success stories about trying to get them establised especially shad.

Thinking about a good way to approach this pond.
1.Probably start off with fertilizer in March.
2.Soon as i get a bloom then 1000 3-6 CNBG or drop them in around April 1 at latest.
3. Look at possibly trying some Adult shiners maybe 5 lb to the acre and see what happens. If the shad are not a wallet killer I might try a certain amount and just see what happens the first year. If I don't see anything next year i'll just stick with Tilapia, if i do then good deal.
4. May 1 probably go with 10 lbs Tilapia per acre.

don't remember if I stated above but I want to make this a nice balanced fishery. as of now its bass heavy but not bad. I took out 20 lbs to the acre this summer. BG population is lacking as of now. Water clear, coontail/pondweed covering the shoreline. Dropped in grass carp at 8 per acre this summer to get a handle of that.

Also will have some 10-12" florida bass going in early next spring at the latest.

These should help on the TShad questions - see the second link first

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthread...a1b3#Post106122 archives

http://www.pondboss.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=88121&fpart=1 - into existing pond with LMB

Eric:

I get a HTTP 404 error when trying to open the link.....

thanks Eric.

Im leaning towards adding the CNBG, feeders, and Tilapia next year while I work at getting the lake to a proper bloom. Im not an expert although I have good help here on the forum and with Todd O. Being this lake has never been fertilized before the first time might be a wild ride untill we get the mix right.

Then the following year if all goes well and the fertilization process is solid, that may be the time.