at one point this summer i added 200-300 tilapia fry to the aquarium for holding. They were about the same size as the red ear so i didnt think they would eat each other but it turned out to be tragic for the red ear as far as food competition. I lost most of the red ear but a few survived. I have about 20 that are eating crushed up commercial feed and this will probably be my last report in 2014. Since they are eating crushed up commercial feed i consider it trivial that i will get them to eat complete pellets form the surface when they are older. I will move these guys outside into my aquaponics system as soon as they are big enough to 1) eat pellets and 2) not get eaten by the other res, bluegill and feed trained hybrid crappie.
I look forward to next year to hopefully trying to reproduce the feed trained black crappie i have in my garage.
I liked using the 55 gallon aquarium so i could monitor growth and progress easily but going forward i wont be using aquariums for fry growout. I will be putting them straight into a large outdoor algae bloom in a minimu of IBC tank and maybe bigger fish tanks.
In the video i kept saying algae and implying the fry were eating algae but the algae bloom is really food for the zooplankton which the fry eat. But visibly it's just algae bloom water when i use it.
I dont think i ramble too much in the video, all good information (imho)
