Pond Boss Forums FISH & FISHING Fly Fishing & Other Fish Species Another Tilapia Question.

Last fall we had aprox 30 to 40 tilapia that we couldn't catch . Im in central Indiana so we had about 6 inches of ice. I ran the bottom aerator all winter so we had a large area unfrozen. Never saw a tilapia float. Not one. water is 42 right now. Any chance they made it?

Steve I seriously doubt they could survive.

Tilapia normally begin to die when water temperature
drops below the 50 degree range for several days.

Thanks for the reply. I hope I get a hungry turtle to show up in the spring. That's a lot of dead tilapia sitting on the bottom.

Need to find a way to cross them with gills so they can handle the cold.

Steve do you have any catfish, they will eat dead tilapia.

No catfish just Georgia giants and wipers. Catfish freak out my grandkids.

Steve, any chance you have some photos of those G. Giants?

I do not. I'm not home. We caught some around 9" last fall. Year and half old

Steve, no, there is NO chance Tilapia survived. Unless you got some of my stock of Blue Tilapia, your fish died at 52* or higher. You will rarely see dead tilapia. Terrestrial critters like coon, opossum, fox, skunks and more will clean up any on the edges really fast. I can also almost guarantee that you have a few turtles doing bottom cleanup...turtles often find your pond before fish are even put in.

Benji, Tilapia are the oldest known farmed species. They have never even slightly acclimated to cooler waters, and hybridization of the most cold tolerant Blue Tilapia (42-45*) results in dying in warmer water of no lower than 52*. Dying annually is HOW the tilapia become a great management tool. If they lived year round, they would just become part of the overall pond biomass. In waters where they die, by consuming otherwise unusable nutrient in a pond, the tilapia convert those nutrients into a consumable food for all your year round fish. This lets you grow more, bigger fish in that same body of water that without tilapia, could not produce enough natural food to sustain the year round fish.

Thanks for the info.I was pretty sure they croaked.