Eric, Makoclay,
Eric, I agree that the potential for negetive impact exists with tilapia. That is why I wanted to point out the possible problem with stocking a smaller fish by the "pound". Like Todd, I do not "grade" the fish and some smaller ones are stocked. Stocking higher numbers of fish that can avoid predation will produce far higher numbers of offspring which could consume too much plant life and result in insufficiant protective cover for the YOY of all species.
I will stock to meet my customers goals and try to steer those goals to reach the 20% vegetation coverage. As to maturity, Mozambique's mature only a week earlier than the Blue. The Blue has a far more varied diet than all other tilapia species along with a greater tolerance for cold, but in Texas, the only legal choice is the Moz. I also make it VERY clear that tilapia in a pond used as a forage fish, MUST be thought of as a supplemental feeding program. Once Tilapia are used for 2-3 years and have artificially raised the fish bio-load in a pond, it must be used annually or the increased load cannot be sustained. Tilapia do not "remove" unused nutrients from a pond, they just make it available and move it further up the food chain into fish biomass. If a pond owner does not remove fish, and those nutrients, a fish kill will still occur evetually, but on a larger scale in terms of size and numbers of fish.
Makoclay, The beauty of tilapia sounding "too good to be true" is that unlike almost everything in pond management taking time to see results, Tilapia results are seen quickly and are often very profound. No, they are NOT a magic bullet, but darn close to it!
