Pond Boss Forums MANAGING AN EXISTING POND Corrective stocking Forage question

Thinking about stocking tilapia and golden shiners in existing pond with lmb,cc, and cnbg. Do you think that the tilapia will take enough pressure off the shiners so they can grow and establish? Any thoughts?

Tilapia are very speedy in water temps above 70 and will escape most predation. Tilapia are very prolific if you have a mixed ratio of males & females. If your water gets into the high 50's come fall, the tilapia will become lethargic and the LMB are in for a feast.

Good news is that if you have FA, the tilapia will eat it. Mine are coming in the mail next week.

Keep you LMB populations low enough and you won't have to worry about your shiners. It is good to have a continuous population of golden shiners in your pond. They will not be wiped out if your bass numbers are right. Remember if you stock tilapia it is advisable to restock regularly as they will displace some of your bluegill using some of the bluegill niche and so they will lessen your forage the following year if you don't restock tilapia after a winter die off. Or else you need to reduce your bass stock.

Bob Lusk
Lunker


Registered: April 10, 2002
Posts: 1896
Loc: Whitesboro, Texas
(71.96.219.121) My opinion of tilapia went from the "theory" stage to "what really happens." I had used them several times, back in the early 90's. Back then, even back into the early 80's, the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department was waffling on their regulatory stance about every three or four years. Tilapia went from legal to illegal, to partly legal. As it stands, we can only used mozambique for recreational ponds. Some species of tilapia die at 52 degrees, some live until the low 40's. Back in the 80's and 90's the big issue for my clients was growing huge bass, fast. Many of them are still that way. They want to grow the biggest bass on the planet. If you read my book, "Raising Trophy Bass," you will see there are several key issues to growing truly huge bass. One is getting bass past that yearling to 15" stage. That's hard, especially when the concept of "catch and release" was impaled in everyone's cerebellum and fisheries cortex. The biggest problem back then was too many small bass competing for too little food.
In the instances I used tilapia, the landowner's mission was to NOT harvest bass, use tilapia to prop up the food chain and expect the bass to grow. What happened, in fact, was the smaller bass grew, their relative weights rose, the tilapia died and we had more bass mass to contend with.
The theory was that the tilapia artificially propped up the food chain, but when they died, left a huge void.
If you use them sporadically, or for just one year, that's what happens.
But, the "reality" I have begun to understand (in career years 22-28) is that tilapia need to be used each year, and the results are quite different than we (I) expected.
The "reality" is that tilapia provide a consistent summer source of food nuggets for intermediate size bass. But, enough of the little guys also survive beyond the summer to provide significant food until water temperatures reach lower lethal.
The side-effects are what surprised me a little bit. I began to notice in the second year of use in particular ponds, that our electrofishing surveys each spring showed growing numbers of intermediate bluegill. That means survival rates through winter were higher.
As I thought about it, peak bass metabolism and activity occurs when water temperatures are about 62-78. Lower, or higher, temperatures cause bass to slow down and "survive."
Here's where it gets fun, for this ol' fish guy from Texas...As I thought about it some more, during bass' peak operating times, about 115-120 "perfect" days here each year, tilapia were doing what they do...have babies like little underwater rabbits. At the same time, the bluegill were doing what bluegill do, have babies kinda sorta like rabbits.
This is where it all began to tie together for me. Bluegill thrive in cool and hot water. In north Texas, we might have 230 "perfect" bluegill growing days. That means 3, 4, maybe 5 spawns a year. That means bluegill growing fast.
But, toss in too many hungry bass, and the earliest spawned bluegill don't stand much of a chance to survive.
Tilapia allowed bluegill to survive longer, making them substantial over a longer period of time.
As I learned, tilapia first increased the statistical odds of bluegill survival. If we got 100,000 tilapia babies in the same water as 100,000 bluegill babies, odds of survival automatically rose, unless bass were so crowded they ate all. Rarely did that happen.
The "significance" comes as bluegill survive longer. Here's how that works. When a bluegill is first hatched, about 12,000 weigh one pound. Allow them to live for 45 days, 30 of them weigh a pound. That's significant. Tilapia allow that to happen just by their presence and sheer numbers.
Each fall, as water temperatures fall, tilapia become sluggish. Now, we are back into those "perfect" bass growing days again, and bass gorge themselves beyond satiation with slow moving targets. Again, bluegill are able to escape.
Essentially, when bluegill need to be left alone to re-populate, thrive and GROW, tilapia give them to chance to do so.
I'm becoming a fan.
Oh yeah, tilapia eat algae, too.

Very cool post Eric. I'm thinking about holding a California congressman hostage until they approve Tilapia in Northern California.

Don't do it JHAP!! I know you saw what the "Governator" did when they tried to take Sarah Connor.

Might I ask where you are getting from?

Jeff, Might I suggest my cuz???? Remember? According to him he started the Ca. envioro stuff!

LOL, that's right I forgot about him Rainman.

Tom:

I believe from Rainman!