Pond Boss Forums Thread Like Summary - Dead Tilapia

I contacted my local fish supplier here in Central Ohio and ordered 8 pounds of tilapia to help w FA. Picked them up on Saturday morning. Floated them for 30 minutes before stocking them.

By that evening I found several dying tilapia. By Sunday I had collected a total of 10 dead. As of today, I’ve collected a total of 2 pounds of dead tilapia. No other fish species found dead and the perch are feeding well as of tonight.

Fish supplier has agreed to replace 2 pounds. My questions are 1.) why did this happen? and 2) if I found 2 pounds, how many others are likely dead that didn’t float?

Water only has about 12” of visibility right now due to the 4” of rain we’ve had the past couple days making it difficult to see what’s actually swimming in the shallows.

part of acclimation is diluting the water in the transport bags with pond water. The chemistry in the pond might be very different than the transport water. So after the temp is pretty close, add 50% of the volume (each addition) of pond water into the bag in 10 min increments. Do that 3 or 4 times before releasing.

bcraley - you are on a learning curve using tilapia. Tilapia are tropical fish. Just because they die around 45F-50F does not mean you can "mess" with them when water is cool. They lose their scales easily when handled during netting and transport. Our Ohio pond water is 60F or maybe 65F depending on Ohio location. Evenings are cool and ponds cool at night. The tilapia that you bought probably never experienced any temps below 70 or 75F. My experience is always stock and handle tilapia when water is consistently 70F or above or you will likely experience what you describe above. When tilapia die especially in fall they 'almost' always sink at least that is how they behave in a cage. A few days later some will float. Maybe 10-15% dead ones will float. It depends. Larger bass eat a lot if not all of the stocked tilapia that struggle with stress or survival especially the tilapia 6" and less. A 6" tilapia is not very wide at 1.5". LMB of 11"-12" gape is around 1.5".