Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Tilapia vs. Game Fish Chow

Each 10 pounds of tilapia can produce over 150 pounds of forage fish per season from otherwise untapped nutients available in the pond. In Memphis' warmer climate, I would be inclined to think the amount of forage fish produced would push 175 pounds with roughly 3 extra spawns.

Rainman,

I'd love to hear the long version of the above comment! Thats very interesting. What are you basing the average size of brooder stock at and i'd like to know how you come to the 150 lbs of forage fish after the season?

Are you suggesting putting in your bass before your tilapia, or tilapia in May and bass the spring after that.

If you are talking about stocking bass the spring after tilapia, you may not see much benefit as those tilapia should die off in the winter before your bass even arrive.

I may be way off base, but reading it that sounded like what you were saying.

Well the lake already has an established LMB population. I have been growing my on Florida fingerlings this year in seperate ponds by themself. I completely drained a .5 and 1 acre lake and stocked them with FHM, CNBG and Tilapia early this spring. Then around June 1 I put in Pure florida 2" fingerlings in both ponds only. There is nothing upstream of these ponds either so the goal is to have a constant supply of pure florida bass to move to my larger lakes.

The original 2" fingerlings are around 10" now and the tilapia are still alive.

I will hopefully be transferring some of these Floridas to the above lakes i've been talking about either late winter 2009 or early spring 2010.

Be sure to leave enough LMB to have a good first spawn next spring in the small ponds. If there are far too many BG and not enough LMB the LMB may not spawn successfully. Probably not a problem but something to be aware of as you reduce the LMB #s in the small ponds.

Thanks for the heads up. I fixed the second link above . Don't know what happened.

I will post the final results of the bass growout ponds later own after the tilapia have died off and we start removing bass. We will see what size the reach with the stocking strategy Todd O advised. We stock 200 bass per acre with a plan to grow them to 12". Then I'll remove as many as I can and leave the rest for broodstock in 2010.

Ewest, if I have two ponds with nothing but pure Florida bass now. Is there any issues with say 5-10 years down the road with the genes in the pond. Or will they just always be genetically identical as the fingerlings I started off with this year?

From 2010 and on, i'll always be trasnfering these Floridas into the larger lakes to refresh the genes. A few per lake per year seems like a good idea.

This is what I would do. Check with Todd and arrange a swap about 5 or 6 years off. Let him shock the small ponds and take a bunch of LMB to sell. In exchange get him to swap you some small Fla LMB from different brood stock. Good for both of you. Then keep doing the same thing. Another option is to find 10-12 12 inch Fla LMB to transplant each year into the small ponds.

I would bet you have about 100 to move this year/first of next year. You will need to keep an eye on the forage status in those small ponds. Need to keep a bunch of small forage (< 4 inches)to feed the small/yoy LMB.

Out of the .5 and 1 acre I have a total of 300 Floridas stocked. I sure hope I can take out atleast half for the pond's health and me needing them.

I plan to fertilize and add tilapia at 20 lbs to the acre on these ponds to keep the food chain up for good forage base, bass growth and recruitment.

My goal is to add atleast 5 10-12" floridas per acre to the larger lakes im working with to upgrade genetics and get Florida genes established.

I would leave 50 LMB in the 1 acre and 25 in the small pond. You will have some natural morts - probably not many. You may have 200 to move. However absent a full pond seine you won't catch them all. Now next year will be a different story if you get an average spawn. You could get as many as 5000 yoy to 2 inch per pair. That is a lot of LMB. Then you have a bunch of options on what you move and when. You will need a lot of forage.