Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Tilapitopia 3.0

Well I thought I should give an update on the fish in T3, after all, they are the reason for the setup.

In short, they are doing great. I have three or four really big males all around 2.5 pounds. All of the fish are getting bigger at a very respectable rate.

Here is a short video I took it after they attacked the first feeding, I tossed in some extra food to get this video:




With the weather we have been having, the solar is able to keep the water temps in the high 70's or low 80's. This week should be interesting to see as we are going to see our lowest overnight temps and some cloud cover. By the end of this week, we will know if we can make it as is.

Good to hear Brian! Keep us posted!

Very cool! 2.5 lbs is a big boy. How big do Tilapia get?

Bryan, I have added some ceiling tiles(similar to the old asbestos tiles once used in a suspended ceiling), added them to surround the aquariums to assist in keeping the water temps up. it helped to raise the temps by 4 to 5 degrees. Have you considered some type of insulation around your tank? I keep mine in the garage where there is no central heat.

Tracy

Tracy,

If you look back at the beginning of this thread, you should see the enclosure we made. It is insulated with R-13 and vapor barrier, We only loose about a half a degree a night with it. On sunny days we can add as much as five degrees back into the water. Our tricky spot is when it is cold and heavy overcast for days, then we loose a little at a time and have to wait for the sun to come out and "refill" our heat sink. So far 77F is as low as it has gotten. The fish seem happy and healthy and our water quality looks great.

I wonder if a tote with lots of loosely spiraled poly tubing buried in sand would be an effective heat storage system....? Similar to the way focused solar is used to create and store solar heat to run steam turbines in dark hours...

My son uses passive solar to heat the water for his house during the late spring, summer and fall. He then switches to the wood stove for his water heater. The passive consists of copper tubing enclosed in a case with a black background and clear cover.

In the summer he actually produces way too much hot water and he has to be careful that his over pressure valve is working properly on the heater tank he has.

Where Tilapitopia is much further south than my son (SE Ks) AND where the tilapia do not need 180 degree water like his kids do to have enough to mix with cold water to take showers, I wonder if a passive solar thermal water heater could not be used for the bulk of heating needs and the solar electrical resistance water heater only be needed for supplemental heat?

Son's system is nothing but copper tubing run like a radiator with a black background and enclosed clear front covering. I know he says he puts out a lot of hot water even in fairly cool temps. Don't know if it would at the temps highflyer will be experiencing. A person would have to do some research on that type systems to see if they would be suitable to do a bulk portion of the heating. If they would, not nearly as large of solar electric array would be needed. Or maybe it would for the coldest temps and days????

Just a thought.

John,

I hear you. I have looked into making a passive solar collector for heat. Mine is 8 feet by 12 feet. Doing the math, I could collect nearly 10,000 watts under best conditions. I have the parts, and have it on the list.

If I finish it, it will be used to heat extratopia over the winters. The real problem is that conditions are not perfect in the winter, so the output will not meet its full potential. Still, it will put out some very nice heat a lot of the time. I look at mine as a season extender in that pond.

Back in the early 80's, a good friend of mine, Jill, had an uncle with a solar heating rig on his house, and that would heat the house and keep the indoor pool nice and warm during the winter. Back then, indoor pools were big and a number of people just built swimming pool rooms in custom greenhouses attached to their house. This one was Solar tho.

What ever happened to that methodology?

Brian, after I posted that, later that night I remembered you had a solar collector on the side of your cabin and thought "he has probably already thought of that!"

Well at least I was not totally off in space with my suggestion! Only my memory.

John,

Great minds think alike!! Its just that at times, we forget our great thoughts.....

Those are called brain farts!

Any updates???

Been sidetracked a bit myself and may need to start over, but can't get fish till April now.

The piglets are doing great. The water quality remains good. We are getting ready to setup the aquariums and see if we can get the spawn going.

I do know there has been some spawning in the big tanks as we now have about a dozen two to three inch fish in the tanks. That said, I am hoping we can do really well in the spawning tanks this spring.

I'll post a few pic tomorrow or the next day.

What happened to yours?

Had to buzz away for 8 days to a place in KY, and the prevailing logic up here determined that the main compressor was making too much noise, so my brother pulled the plug.

He was scolded...

Brian, thanks again for showing me your setup with the Tp. I hope to follow along your footsteps by next fall. And you have a really nice place there. I had plans on my forage pond (area has been cleared and is ready for the digging) but after seeing your 3 forage pond set up along with your expansion plans, I am thinking of changing my forage pond of 1/3rd acre to 2 or 3 smaller forage ponds. looks much easier to work with. Glad to hear you cleared your dam piping. And thanks again for showing me around, nice pier, nice camp house, nice lake.

Tracy

Tracy,

Glad to have you out. You are welcome back anytime.

I think you will be happier with options, and thats what several forage/growout ponds do for you. Remember, if you get the big traps, use the setting tool.

And keep your pet dogs and cats away from those traps!

T3 is working well, so well that we are trying to get them to spawn and grow out some fry.

Here is the tank setup.

We are trying the caves turned both ways. We will see which is preferred.





Here you can see two Tilapia swimming together over the fanned out area. Another female is mouth brooding in the "cave."

do you have a tank for the fry? or do you just take the parents out?

For now, dad comes out after prom night, and mom comes out after brooding is over. I hope to have a fry only tank soon.

Very cool setup Brian. I'm jealous.

You'll be amazed by the amount of fry that she spits out. I can never get over it, wondering how does she hold all of them! What amazes me even more is during the first day or two after their big release, is that she can go around and suck everyone of them back in. She can have hundreds in her mouth and still catch a single one that is swimming around loose.

Also along that note, I have seen the mother suck in a fry while she was taking in pellets. She spits the fry out and eats the pellets!!!!!!!!!

John,

Come down and play anytime.

FnC.

I just hope we get that far. If we do, then we have a spring project to look forward to.

Well our aquariums did work, but it turned out to be a bit more work than my partner expected and we had limited recruitment. That said, we did learn a lot about breeding. Next time we are going to add a lot more area for the fry to "hide" in until we can collect them and transfer them to an IBC to grow them out.

How many fry estimate did you pull off?