I have a 3 acre pond that I started working on last year after discovering this site. The pond was bass heavy and FA heavy.
I culled @75 stunted bass and later after reasearching more I stocked 75 8-10" tilapia ( nile/blue hybrids)

The tilapia were nice to watch but also due to their lite color were often preyed on by birds, herons and ospreys alike.

Eventually they got hudge really liked the pellets, never saw a big difference in FA but I could watch them pull on it and graze like cattle

Just after christmas they died off and had to dig a big hole. Some were as large as the end of my boat paddle close to 3lbs.

So I made my mind up not to get any more due to the lack of FA management.
That was before I went fishing this spring. The size of my bass had grown exponentially. My bream population at the feeder seemed to have almost doubled as well. I don't know if it was the culling, the tilapia or both but I put 150 smaller 4-6" tilapia last week to keep this growth going

Just my totally newby unbiased tilapia observations

Very cool info, gopack. Thanks for sharing that.

Good job. Wish we could stock them in GA.

How many fish do you think you had to put in the ground?

Where did you get yours this year?

Were they sold by the fish or per pound?

I buried 27,

I got them from the same guy as lastyear SE pondstocking in Wilmington NC

No, no body local sells them buy the pound, the one's I got this year were considerably smaller but also cheaper, thinking maybe they won't be such pellet hogs

I will try some pics of last years kill

GPack with 4"-6" tilapia expect your bass to eat a lot of the 4"-5" ones. Tilapia to eat pellets when pellets are on the water but soon after consuming pellets they are back to eating algae. Tilapia in warm water are eating constantly not like other fish with larger stomachs who can binge feed and then not eat for 10-24 hrs.

Well how many 4-6 inch Tilapia do you think you would need to stock to compensate for the bass eating most of them. I think that is the size we may be able to get here?

Also what size bass are we talking about eating them?

Plus I thought once Tilapia got 2-3 inches they could avoid just about all predation?

Is there any kind of structure or cover that would help Tilapia avoid being eaten until they get a little bigger?

I wonder how large 4-6 inch Tilapia could get in the growing season in NE Oklahoma?