Just some FYI on using Tilapia as a management tool. First, Tilapia are intended to die each fall, that is how they work their magic. Those $18/lb fish are hybrids, and will die around 55 degrees. The ones I sell, survive to 45. Tilapia can be stocked as a management tool for a few reasons, but primarily to eat filamentous algae, as no other fish does (especially grass carp). Tilapia reproduce like crazy, and being mouth brooders, 98% of the eggs hatch to become fry. The female releases the fry from the safety of her mouth into algae mats growing on the pond bottom. Those babies literally eat themselves out of a home and your other young of year fish, like BG and LMB hover around grabbing all the fry they can get. LMB YOY concentrating on the Tilapia fry will take predation pressure off your BG forage and after the Tilapia are gorged on at the end of the season, the LMB and other apex predators have lots of extra BG to forage (and other forage species) on throughout winter.
Tilapia also grow about 1" a week, converting food at about a 1.2:1 rate, meaning 1 pound of flesh per 1.2 pounds of food eaten. Since they grow so fast, and primarily only eat what nothing else in the pond can, or does eat, the tilapia grow quickly into the perfect size ranges for any size fish in the pond...this alone increases the sizes of virtually every large fish faster than any other annually stocked fish could.
Tilapia also eat the detritus on the pond bottom, improving water quality by oxygenating compressed debris and promoting aerobic bacterial growth, which helps to recover/speed up muck reduction (the $30,000 job?)
That is just a brief overview of what tilapia do, when stocked at proper rates for proper goals. If your muck is not silt, that fish that dies every year could do, for far less money than, what you were quoted on a renovation. Add up costs for aeration, fish food, and chemicals to control plants, and even $25/lb is a bargain.
Last edited by Rainman; 05/04/16 08:15 PM.
