Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Understanding fish...(Tilapia sending a message)

My fish taught me a lesson in the last 24 hours, I hope this helps somewhere along the way.

I have Tilapia, same brood, but separated. One branch lives in the wild (my pond), the other is in a confined environment (i.e. 90 Gal. aquarium)

The wild outdoor fish will take a cricket almost instantly, if they can get it first. There is problem # 1. Bluegill may not see it first, but they are much more aggressive and eat it first. Tilapia do not strike their food, they swim up to it and try to gently inhale it. If there is any resistance, they back off.

Problem # 2, The controlled Tilapia in an aquarium never really survive / fight for their food, they get fed daily, pellets. They have no desire to eat a live cricket.

When a cricket is introduced into the aquarium, the Tilapia seem interested, may nibble, but do not eat. The cricket has to be retrieved and put back into the "cricket house".

It appears that the elements in this case are telling me that "conditioned" fish act in predictable manners. Also, there is a lot to be said about "surviving on your own". The fish that are fed daily, want the same food. Could this have a correlation between feeders and hard to catch fish ?

reason 1: The feeder fed fish want and eat the same food every day.

reason 2: The aggressive fish know what the "predictable" fish will do (i.e. bgill eating pellets) and will eat at the same time. Their dinner bell is also when the feeder goes off, but for a completely different reason.

Comments of any nature are encouraged....

Eastland,
Interesting observations. I believe most animals if not all can be conditioned to react according to what their environment allows or dictates. When we control their environment we can influence their behavior/reactions.

I would bet that if your aquarium raised fish had only ever seen crickets they would have a similar reaction to an infrequent presentation of pellets.

I believe fish react primarily on instinct. (They don't have advanced brains) The aquarium raised fish instinctively investigate the crickets but are conditioned to pellets while the pond raised fish are accustomed to seeing a versatile diet presented & instinctively take advantage.

I further believe that the act of BG feeding, for instance, which have been conditioned to eating pellets, stimulates LMB to feed on the BG with the most aggressive LMB being first at the trough.

In summary, I don't think feeding ones fish will have an adverse effect on aggressive behaviors & for me at least is reinforced with the experience Greg G. has seen with the ponds he manages where LMB are more aggressive & more easily caught in ponds that have feeders.

I may be guessing and assuming at the same time. If a person elects to feeding their fish, they are in turn conditioning them to eat. When the attempt to get their fish to eat "outside" their usual element, they get diminished results.

Thus, my conclusion would be, (and I've been wrong many times before), a person who artifically feeds their fish stands a much smaller chance of catching them on "artifical" presentations, when the dinner bell is going to ring at the scheduled time.

To summarize...the cricket in the aquaruim was very odd to the the diet of the indoor fish...much like the cricket may be to the diet of an outdoor fish.

My point may be, When you elect to articically feed, you are also giving up a percentage of the "catchability" of your fish.

Good discussion Eastland,
I guess I consider feeding fish more of an "outside" their usual element. They are after all in the pond being exposed to lots of opportunities to feed on whatever they instinctively are attracted to 100% of their living life where-as the percent of time they are presented pellets in miniscule.
Pellets are no different to a fish than an enormous hatch of mayflies IMO. They are presented with an abundance of food & they take advantage. This doesn't mean they don't feed on other offerings the rest of the time, again IMO.

Ric, I honestly appreciate your input...I wonder if constant feeding may end up with shy (less aggressive) bass. Could a pellet trained (top of the food chain) LMB get accustomed to a floating morsel of food (or bgill that feed upon them)and, in turn, get somewhat frightened or less interested in an object (i.e. lure) hitting the surface ?

Do you also feed pellets to the Tilapia in the pond? And how often?
If you do I'm sure some of the competition from the BG and others in the pond, might leave the T more hungry than those who eat their fill of pellets in the aquarium. Causing the T, BG, and others in the pond to have to forage on natural resources in addition to the pellets.
How long before the tilapia in the aquarium will eat crickets after you stop or lower amount of pellets fed?
I agree that the fish in the pond are surrounded with forage options making them more likely to vary their diet due to availability and ease of capture of said forage including pellets. Do the T in the pond more ferociously attack natural forage like insects, or pellets?
Man, you guys got me interested in experimenting with feeding habits!!!!

Unfortunately I don't live at my pond site yet!

Too funny, it's way too complicated for me to measure in my pond with any degree of certainty. I only have one very small feeder going for the HSB...I'm guessing that "if" a tilapia enters into their food zone, he will be mistaken for food during feeding time.

Bassandgrass, are you suggesting that if I turn off my aquarium's daily feed, and throw them crickets (better yet, lures that look like crickets) they just might become more aggressive toward akward looking meals ?

We may be speaking the same language...but in different terms. Working my "real time " job, We use the Six Sigma (geek speak) approach, it's used by most major corporations for studies...I will translate my knowledge and environment for a study...it will take a minimum of 1 year to gather data though, don't hold your breath I will find a predictable pattern though...good or bad.

Well I think that getting a basline like you are getting now from your findings, and changing one variable such as types of food fed to your T and recording observations over time will give you data to prove or disprove a hypothesis. Is that the six sigma approach? I guess the aquarium is the place to start because it is definately easier to control than your pond. Just my $.02, I am very interested in your findings. I hypothesize that the T in the Aquarium might prefer the crickets after regular exposure to both types of forage.

Eastland, I am a sucker for a good discussion.
I enjoy exchanging thoughts.
It's my opinion that simply training a fish to feed on pellets does not remove it's natural instinct to attack natural prey.
I believe a fish that is stimulated to feed on pellets, or as in LMB feeding on BG which are feeding on pellets, is doing what is ingrained in their make-up. They don't have a choice in the matter it's what they've been doing for thousands of years. Even if they are full when prey presents itself at the right time & place they will strike.
Anyone who has fished for some years has caught fish whitch should have been full by our standards.
I said before, I don't think fish sense hunger or full .
If anything I believe properly feeding fish makes them healthier enabling them to be a more successful predator.
Remember it's the biggest fish that holds the most advantageous position in the water to catch prey.

We all have wondered why fish don't bite at times. I would guess alot of sports writers as well as lure makers have made a good living supposedly solving that problem for us, & still are!

It's a very intresting observation you have going! Maybe someone like Bill C could offer advice on how to use your observations to come to a scientific conclusion.

I'll offer this last thought, as I said before when a large hatch of insects is taking place one would be hard pressed to catch a fish on any other offfering, but sometime later they will not turn down familiar prey.

Eastland :

I read your first post 3 times. A very interesting discussion by all. I think we are trying to compare to many variables in several very different fish species. Tilapia are not predator fish in any normal sense. A cricket is not their normal food . They eat plankton and plants etc. If the ones in the pond are eating crickets that is where I would start the search and ask why are they eating outside their food range in the pond.

BG and bass are to different from tilapia to compare their genetic traits whether in terms of the hard wired ones { like reproduction or predatory nature} or the genetic rate of change to conditioned ones like eating pellets. For example I have kept and feed BG and LMB in an aquarium on feed. They will always stop eating feed to eat a live prey put in like tadpoles or crickets even if they have just gorged on feed. They go into a feeding frenzy when the live prey hits the water and do not stop until all are eaten. We talked about that at DFW. Eating is a genetic response based on metabolism which is in part controlled by water temp. , day length changes , growth rate and a host of other factors and restricted by other factors like waryness , water conditions , and the presence of larger predators. I hope this helps some. One thing to note-- feed trained LMB do move away from eating pellets as they stay in the pond longer and their offsring are far less likely to eat pellets ( become conditioned). They are moving away from the conditioned response toward their genetic response. ewest

Ewest, you are right on the money...my problem statement going forward is : "Why do Tilapia eat Crickets"

I will limit my research there, hopefully we will all benefit down the line. This board is awesome...thank you all for the contributions.

Another "Mad Scientist" at work

I wrote some on this and was taken away. Upon return I read ewest's reponse which is a much better explanation than mine.
I don’t have any experience with aquarium fish so I can only draw from the pond. I started with 100 tilapia, all “pellet trained”. If I feed the tilapia veggies they eat just as Eastland describes. But, feed them pellets and they strike eagerly as the pellets hit the water. They then settle down a little, but still try to get as many pellets in their mouth as possible. Live crickets are some where in between.
One other thing would seem to be a factor, fish that feed on live fish would need to be a lot more aggressive than fish that eat algae, I don’t see many fish racing to down that last little bit of algae. My little water snake never goes for the pellet.
After reading ewaet's response, I don't know if this in any way helps, but sparrows, a seeded eater, will eat insects just prior to laying eggs. The chicks need more protein.

Eastland,

Your observations match mine exactly...except for the aquarium which I do not have. Your conclusions are exactly what I have also concluded for several years now. I would only add that this conditioning, when applied over longer and longer periods of time becomes more and more ingrained in the fish.

I think observations, such as you are making, based on "hands-on" and "eyes on" data are very relevant. They are much more relevant than restatements of writings that someone else may have made. I would like to see much more of these kinds of observations on the Forum...from people who are observing, managing, and catching the fish in their ponds. First person experiments are healthy, should be encouraged, and widely reported on here.

Addressing Tilapia for a moment, I'm really looking forward to next month and catching some record Tilapia. I've got a couple of new techniques to try and one old one to try again. This years' stockers had some really large fish compared to last year. I expect that to translate to large Tilapia this fall.

p.s. Eastland, thanks for posting those pictures of Tentmaker's gate.

ewest, RAD,

I wonder if conditioning is the main reason for the behavior, or something physiological is going on? Many plant eaters have a complex digestive system that may contain microbes to aid digestion and nutrient absorption.

After eating a certain plentiful food for a while, the tilapia's gut may adapt it's microbal culture and digestive enzymes to the plentiful food. If so, it's possible they would have an instinct to avoid sudden changes in diet that would upset their digestion.

That's a lot of "maybe's", and probably overanalyzing, but I wonder about it.

I'd like to make a small contribution to what is already an excellent discussion.

1. Everything said in these posts matches to my pet theory which I would state as follows:

"Satiation and competition drive selectivity"

Meaning.... Many fish are opportunists, which will sample a variety of offerings. If a fish is well fed, he would still eat, but is less likely to select an odd or unfamiliar offering. He may still agressively take an offering, in spite of being full, if he believes the offering is realistic and there is direct, appreciable competition for said offering. Negative reinforcement has to then be factored in. Each fish's capture event, especially to a particular offering then subtracts from his liklihood of eating depending on the genetic makeup and intelligence of a particular fish.

The tilapia behavior follows this to a tee. So do Meadowlark's hard to catch LMB.

If you want a fish to be catchable you need to account for all factors.

Hunger, genetics, conditioning, presentation and health of the fish all play a part, with no one factor entirely dictating the response.

Eastland,
To avoid causing more rankor like the above I won't be posting any more responses on your thread.
Thanks for the discussion. I enjoyed it.

Guys :

I agree and especially with Bruce's short but well stated pet theory. There are so many factors both envior. and physiological { including genetic and conditioned } at work that it is next to impossible to know the why and how a fish acts a certain way at a certain time. We can learn all we can from many sources and add to that all of our collective observations shared here to make an educated guess. Part of the fun is to make our own theory and test it as best we can. That process makes us each a better PB even when we make big mistakes. ewest

Ewest,
I agree wholeheartedly, I enjoy the entire complex pond process. I never thought that when I had the guy dig the hole that it would be as involving as it has become. I intended to plant some fish and flowers and go fishing when I felt like it. 1200 fish and 5000 plants later I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface.

Yesterday, after I had posted a response to this thread, I went down to feed the fish. My pond rat gang was there waiting to go swimming and their swimming meant that I had extra time, so I feed the pellet food like usual and then I feed the veggies. I had bok choy, asparagus and green onions. I cut the asparagus into small pieces and threw maybe 20 chunks and the pacu casually ate all. The tilapia stayed out of the way. I slowly reduced the number of pieces until I was throwing just one at a time. The piece when thrown would strike the water sink a few inches then resurface. In the beginning the pacu would let it resurface then take it, they moved to taking it under water and finally taking it as it hit the water. There were tilapia all around the school of pacu but none would go after the asparagus. I threw several pieces into heavy cover where some of the tilapia were and one would slowly swim by then turn and take the piece then spit it back out then, if the pacu didn’t see it first, eat it.
When feeding pellets or large amounts of cabbage or bok choy, the largest of the tilapia will compete with the pacu. But when small amounts of food are present the tilapia defer to the eager eating pacu. If and when I find a predator I will give an update.
Oh yeah, they ate the green onions too.

Rad said: That one sentence could be the motto of this entire forum.

Well said RAD...and thanks to Theo for highlighting it.