Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Can talapia be raised above ground swimming pools?

Whats up Steve? Have not seen any updates lately. Things still going well?

Fish fry?

Just messing with ya Steve.

Learning Curve

First time around (before the internet) my fish were too small to fry

30 degree temp drop in less than an hour...

We need an update Steve!

Seems like the fish are getting bigger. They eat a lot more when it's hot. I been thinking of getting into crayfish and plants. I have an agreement with a guy from craigslist to deliver 4 24" x 7' x 17 foot fiberglass containers on his way to vegas in a couple weeks. Two of them have fork lift punctures but I am sure I can fix them up. I also ordered some new air pumps. I put my 20 watt in the pool and it pumps a lot of air but it stops working when it gets really hot. Just when the fish need it most. I am thinking about locating air pumps inside my swamp cooler but I will probably be ok till next summer.

Also it's getting time to think about building some sort of cold frame over the pool in the next month or so.

I found one more dead one in the pool this morning. That makes a total of three out of the 100 fish that I have started with. I think this was another female same as last only very swollen. From what I am reading loosing only three fish is good. My water is also looking clearer and all of my tests for ammonia n2 and n3 are undetectable. It has taken a brown color and I added a tablespoon of ammonium sulfate. I swear it started looking greener after only half an hour. I'm going to wait for three full days to test the water and of it is still low add some more fertilizer. It's nice to have the water actually getting clearer instead of cloudy.

I been feeding the fish really heavy and the water seems to be staying pretty clear. It does have a lot of protein bubbles on it in the morning but they are gone as soon as the sun hits.

I keep looking for fry in the water but haven't seen anything. The bottom is littered with pvc pipe and flower pots for them to hide and mate in. I read that you can get schools swimming on the surface. If I even saw one fry I would set up something and start collecting them. I got a hunch it's going to get too cold for any breeding to occur before winter gets here. I wouldn't mind getting hold of some sort of aquatic plants for them to hide in, just in case.

None of my new pumps or stuff has gotten here yet. I can't wait to see how much of a difference going from a 20 watt to an 80 watt air pump makes. I thought I was getting a lot of aeriation from the spash coming out of my filters but having all the airstones on the bottom seems to have made a huge difference.

I was going to ask if anyone thought it would hurt to use a piece of rebar as a weight inside a piece of poly pipe to plug my airstones into when my new air pump gets here. It comes in 10 foot lengths which will string the perfect distance across my 12 foot pool. I was thinking it would get rusty at first because of laying at the bottom of a pool but duh It's going to be encased in plastic pipe and have air blowing through it. I don't see it hurting anything. In theory I can plug as many airstones as I want into the pipe and add more as the old ones become clogged.

The rebar will still rust as compressed air is extremely humid. The rust rebar wont really hurt anything other than being a big airflow restriction.

You could always paint the rebar, just make sure it is completely dried and cured. Then just wash it off real good with soap and water.

I like the painting idea.

For whatever reason, if the rebar rusts, small particles will flake off sooner or later.

Now, they will lay in the bottom of the tube, which is no big deal. BUT, if they get disturbed for any reason while the air is going, there is the possibility of them getting pushed inside the airstones, which might not be a good thing.

Airstones should be cleaned regularly in Muratic Acid which will dispatch the rust rather quickly....

Spotting a fry may be to late. I have seen the larger ones eat the fry quickly after being hatched. When they females stop eating check their mouths for eggs, roughly 18 days from last hatch. Hatch the eggs yourself and raise separate from the larger ones.

When the water starts becoming cloudy is when they will start dieing off. Don't really know what causes it. I have run my tanks from clear, green, real dark green and almost black with no problems. When it takes on a cloudy tint, problems.

If I could spot one I would at least know they are breeding. I have no idea what is happening down there. I would think at least one or two eventually would survive. From what I have read fry are more of a problem than a blessing when raising talapia because there tends to be so many they keep the rest of the fish small and they never get big. I actually had a dream last night that I found a dead fry about an inch long floating in the water. I agree about the cloudy water. It's been almost 2 weeks since I have had to change any water and it's actually getting clearer by the day. I am feeding the fish as much as they will eat too.

Check your filtration system. There have been several fry that get sucked up through the pump and end up living in the filtration system. Fry in the tank can be eaten within minutes.

The other thing that can be happening is if you have a large population of males and they are fighting the female will spit out the eggs and either they will be eaten or fall to the bottom and if she doesn't pick up fairly quickly they will not develop and hatch.

This is amazing! When I looked at my water this morning it is crystal clear! A week ago it was like pea soup and I never changed a single drop of it! All I have is five 55 gallon drum clarifiers. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it. I made a video if I ever get time to upload it.

Did you cut back on your feeding?

The same thing has happened to the goldfish ponds. The water was really cloudy a few days ago when I found two dead birds in the bottom pond. I was going to change the water but I never got around to it. Now it's too late... the water is crystal clear! It's odd that both the tilapia and the goldfish cleared up on the same day. I built the goldfish filter in my second batch, which was almost a week later... despite this actually the goldfish were clear a couple days before I found the birds. Maybe it has more to do with the age of the pool than it does the age of the biofilters. I built that pool a week or two before the talapia pool but the tilapia had their filters built first...

No. I actually increased it. I am feeding them as much as they will eat several times a day. 10 times more food then when the water was dirty. It's got to be the filters kicking in and working.

Here are some videos of my fish.

This first one is a few days after I got them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhsijMTNXfc

Here they are jumping out of the water at feeding time. They did it a few minutes before and I was hoping they would do it again when I came back with the camera. They did not disappoint me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziTZvkAdgLQ

In this video about a week ago the fish are getting bigger.
Also notice how the water progressively clears in each video. Most of them were taken just after a water change. In the last video I took this morning the water is pretty old. I only did one water change the day I lost two fish and I really didn't need to but I felt better safe than sorry. I could also upload a video of my goldfish setup made of two kiddie pools if anyone is interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdljeEXRK1M

This final video (I called it video 3 and then I sneaked the one of them jumping in to confuse everybody) Is the one I took this morning. Look how clear the water is. It shows the big long strands of microbes several inches long growing on the mesh. Also I swear the fish are bigger in each video. And did I mention (enough times) how clear the water has become? Is somebody sneaking in and changing the water while I am gone? What do you guys think? How come there is hardly any algae?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8reEJxvwmg

Here is a picture of what I am feeding them.

Seems like I have also adopted a cat. I noticed whenever I left bags of fish (I mean cat) food out they started disappearing. I finally started leaving a dish of food out and every morning it's empty. I've seen the cat and he doesn't look anything like the picture on the bag but this is exactly what I have been feeding them. The first bag was Stater Brothers brand and about four dollars cheaper.

FEEDING:
I'm still working on how much to feed the fish. I was feeding them as much as they would eat all day long and the water is getting very dirty again after less than a week so I backed off yesterday. I think if I would just feed them for about five or ten minutes once or twice a day the water would stay clear.

I've been going back to work and I've been considering looking into automatic fish feeders. Does anybody know of anything that might work for a swimming pool? It looks like the automatic cat feeders might be my best bet but I'm also interested in finding some sort of demand feeder like in the book. Anybody know where to buy them from?

To cut expenses I am also going to be moving me and the fish soon to my apartment complex that I am hoping to open up by spring. The complex is on three acres but more than half of it is open area that I am seriously considering setting up for gardening, fish and other hobbies for (me and) the future tenants.

SurfSteve, feeding Cat Chow is likely to have a high amount of waste in the form of undigested material.

if your fish are above 6"long feeding would be 1.5-4 pounds of feed per day fed over 2-4 periods per day. This would be the rate if using Purina Aquamax---a highly digestable food for fish.

An educated guess for using Cat Chow would be to feed 3-10 pounds Cat chow and get more filtration to handle the high ammonia load.

Compare most dog feed daily feeding rates for a 100# dog. Common brands will suggest 10-15 cups feed per day and will produce lots to clean up at the other end of the dog where Purina Pro Plan, a highly digestable feed requires 3.5-4 cups daily and produces little waste daily at the other end. The good feed may cost more, but overall expense is lower along with cleanup cost. Not to mention you'll have a healthier, less stressed animal.

You asked how come there is no algae? there is a LOT of algae!!! It is what you call "long strands of microbes" which are in fact Filamentous Algae (FA). The FA is growing in the filters because of the trapped wasted feed nutrient load.

I get it!

Sea Kittens

You think there is algae in that video? I went out there this evening and there has been an algae explosion! The water is looking clear and very green. It has to be the small handfull of ammonium sulfate I threw in the pool but I think the algae ate all the stuff that is making it cloudy. Maybe tomorrow it will start trapping it in the filters and it will be back to what it was in the video. My Ammonia was a little above zero in the video and now it's at least a half PPM. I gave them two five minute feedings today and very little else.

I will check more into the cat food. They seem to love it and I read several people were saying it was just as good as Purina fish chow. But food seems to be a minor expense at this point. Electricity is probably my main expense but that's because I live in California. I would imagine most if not all the commercial growers were probably put out of business in the Enron days. I wouldn't be surprised if these fish cost me ten dollars per pound by the time they are raised after all the expenses are counted up. So I will give the catfood a little more consideration. It still may win out just because of convenience. Unless I can get the cats to start eating fish food but that just doesn't seem right... It's amazing how fast the water can go from cloudy to clear and back to cloudy again. It seems like there might be a delay of a few days which is making things hard and throwing me off.

If I get lots and lots of tanks I might have to get real scientific about the feeding. I was keeping track of it before the cat started eating it. I think all they can eat for five minutes twice a day is a good save bet. Of course everyone wants to feed them more to make them grow faster or what ever. But they wont grow very fast if you feed them too much and they die.

If the water is clear tomorrow I will bump the food back up. The fish seem to be happy. I bet in a few days the algae will take out all the ammonia from the fertilizer and either the fish will eat the algae or the filter will trap it. Probably both.

Hmm,

I am not claiming to be an expert, but I have done some diet formulation for my animal nutrition and metabolism classes.

The purina cat chow will not be as good as the purina fish chow.

Sure, the digestibility and % protein could be the same, but if the protein composition does not contain the proper "building blocks", then it will reflect poorly on growth.

Have you entertained the idea of growing some aquatic plants for the tilapia to eat? It might be a good supplement to their diet.

I am planning on raising lettuce and other vegetables and feeding all of the scraps to the fish. I am also thinking I can fillet the tilapia and feed the scraps to the crayfish and feed the crayfish scraps to the crayfish and filter all that water through the plants. I can't wait till my new (used and damaged) $3000 fiberglass tanks get here that I paid a hundred bucks each for. Now I just hope I have the free time to work on them.

The algae is very thick in the water now but the water is very clear and healthy looking. It's hard to believe the couple tablespoons of ammonium sulfate I threw in five days ago can grow that much algae. I think it's probably good for the fish as long as I can keep my ammonia below 1/2 ppm.