Got some of these guys last week from Rex. Great guy, and the fish are doing great. Caught quite a few today. I was having no luck catching them, then came inside, and tied a fly that looked like a floating fish pellet. I am a poor fly tier, but even I can tie a reasonable representation of a pellet. Then we started hammering them. They are quite strong fighters. Much more impressive than a bluegill of similar size. I am very excited about these fish. I am building a 2500 gallon tank in my greenhouse to over winter a large amount of broodstock. I happen to have a wood burning furnace, and an adding the hot water coil to heat the tilapia tank, as well as running water coils through our raised beds to heat the soil for year around growth. The tilapia tank will be recirculating during the winter, but will be switched to a flow through system (drawing water from the pond) during summer. I will also, stock the pond itself yearly with tilapia. I am also thinking of a good use of excess stock. In my area of Ohio we have lots of catfish pay lakes. They stock huge flatheads, and huge blue cats. They sell bait to fishermen, typically chubs, and bluegills. Well if tilapia turn out to make decent catfish bait, I might have an outlet. They should be easy for the paylake to maintain, require no chillers, should last well on a hook, should last well in a bait bucket. Also they will die in the winter, so when the fishermen dump their excess bait, they will not effect the forage base long term. The paylake might also get the added benefit of supplemental food from the tilapia, as well as filamentous algae control. This all depends on whether they make a decent bait, though I would expect that anything that is lively will draw the attention of a large flathead. I am also hoping that I might be able to market a few through a local hatchery for an addition to grass carp for algae control. Even city folk with Koi ponds might enjoy the benefits of tilapia for algae control. Might even be able to get quite a price premium for them considering they sell White Amur for about 14 bucks a pop.
Then of course there is the primary use for home food production. I am hoping that these guys live up to my expectations as far as growth goes. My pond was intended to be a food stockpile. Could harvest some food no matter how broke we are, and with the current state of the economy, this might just become important. Seems that tilapia should greatly exceed the growth of other panfish, with less outside input. Fertilizer in the form of manure is more easily available to me from my livestock, than is pelleted feed. So ideally the tilapia should be very low input.
If anyone has comments, or suggestions please let me have them. This system is in the design phase, the greenhouse is built, but the infrastructure is not yet in place. I will be taking a couple weeks off of work in late July to do the build. I will take photos, and document the build in the appropriate sub forum. Wish me luck.
