Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Overwintered tilapia in north carolina

Dave, the Tilapia swim rapidly up and down, from breaking the surface down to detritus laden muck and flash, or "slap" the newly oygenated water into anoxic areas, heavily mixing the stagnated waters while doing so...If you see tilapia in clear waters, they appear like they scratching their sides on the leaves and other detritus lying compacted on the pond bottom. Tilapia do this to promote aerobic bacterial growth on detritus. The tilapia consume the bacteria and as a bonus like when adding aeration, the aerobic bacteria also more rapidly digests the detritus...

What about a trophy BG pond... It is my understanding that Tilapia readily consume artificial pellet feed, which directly takes food away from the BG, and/or increases the amount of feed which must be dispensed, thereby driving up costs. AND, a well managed BG pond will rely on a predatory species to control BG offspring.... It is often touted as an advantage to have Tilapia present as forage for your Bass, when dealing with a LMB orientated goal, or at least in a more traditional balanced scenario, but when trophy BG are the goal LMB considerations are secondary at best, aside from maintaining their numbers. It would seem that the forage provided by yoy Tilapia would reduce the pressure on the BG yoy, which would appear counterproductive.

I'm still not following the reasons why Tilapia don't count towards carrying capacity. Don't they breathe too? Wouldn't that impact the available biomass a given BOW could support?

sprkplug, There are 2 ways to look at a trophy BG fishery....Tilapia are indeed pellet hogs, yet convert the pellets at roughly a 1.2:1 rate where BG convert around 4:1....If larger BG eat tilapia, you may gain more bang for your buck on tilapia being foraged over the pellets, but BG would probably expend more calories eating live food.

The second view is that with the increased caryying capacity, your pond could theoretically carry twice the trophies with more total available forage along with more, larger, over-abundant LMB to still control the excess BG recruitment.

As for affecting the biomass, tilapia do..they increase it as much as 5 fold in fish, but offset by the larger amount of biomass they consumed to grow, much of it detritus, which often comsumes more oxygen than the Tilapia will...plus as said above, the Tilapia will bring oxgenated water to areas it never existed....in an already aerated pond, the additional oxygen is a moot point.

Tilapia simply allow a pond to find a new, higher carrying capacity by consuming available nutrient other species cannot digest and utilize, moving it into the food chain for the"normal" fish to consume.

There is no succinct way to state all the interactions.