Anyone else raising fish for food??? Now with pictures of the Harvest!

60 gallon water change today… added my down tubes to the suction pipes, ( down tubes reduce the amount of surface skimming & are needed to keep the Duckweed from filling up my filters ) ( originally had one surface skimming, & one sucking from towards the bottom, in each tank ) once they were slipped on, I added a scoop of giant duckweed to each tank containing Tilapia… several are starting to eat it…I’ve got another week or two of the smaller fingerling pellets, then onto the next bigger growth pellets... most fish are 4-6 inches long already..., I was surprised... ( I didn't see them as the Duckweed is so thick ) at the amount of roots growing out of the hydroponic pots... I think it's the cucumbers or Tomato's going wild

Getting bigger... snapped a couple pictures last night, under the lights, at feeding time... picture quality isn't good... darned fish wouldn't hold still... ( if you are zooming, the top half of the picture will be the clearest ) Note the clear water... easy to see the bottom, & the tanks are 3 feet deep

Definitely eating the giant duckweed… I’m adding it to the tanks with the tilapia in, after I feed them a scoop of pellets in the morning, and they are eating it while I’m at work and can’t feed them pellets… so far, they have consumed 4 -4” aquarium nets heaped full in 2 days… it’s going to be the perfect food for them to eat, while I’m at work… plus they are still eating the recommended amount of pellets, between the morning, late afternoon, and evening feedings… pretty confident that we’ll have full size Tilapia before it gets too cold for them…

Brought up to the main floor, the 1st of the 2 tanks, from the basement, that I’m going to use for a Tilapia breeding setup this tank is a standard ( high ) 45 gallon… got a couple months to get that all ready... the 65 gallon thick glass ( non tempered ) is going to take a little more effort... but both are 36" long tanks... so I'm doing my standard non ornamental aquarium stands 2" thick planks between 4" X 8" X16" cement blocks stacked on the sides of the bottom tank, to support the top tank... the 65 will be on the bottom, with the 45 on top

I think I might go catch some fish for food tomorrow or the next day. Raising them is too much work for me.

Magnum Man said:

Definitely eating the giant duckweed… I’m adding it to the tanks with the tilapia in, after I feed them a scoop of pellets in the morning, and they are eating it while I’m at work and can’t feed them pellets… so far, they have consumed 4 -4” aquarium nets heaped full in 2 days… it’s going to be the perfect food for them to eat, while I’m at work… plus they are still eating the recommended amount of pellets, between the morning, late afternoon, and evening feedings… pretty confident that we’ll have full size Tilapia before it gets too cold for them…

Brought up to the main floor, the 1st of the 2 tanks, from the basement, that I’m going to use for a breeding setup this one a standard ( high ) 45 gallon… got a couple months to get that all ready

Click to expand...

You’re going to need many tilapia recipes. Perhaps you’ll write a tilapia cookbook.

Thanks, I hope so… today’s lunch for one of the fish tanks, so they can buffet while I'm at work…

Couple better pictures by morning light... hard to believe these were little 3/4" sticks about a month ago... I'm really happy with everything... there are a couple slight modifications I'll make for next year, with the set up... for one, I only eyeballed the tanks level... everything is working by my 1st calculations, but the center tank is 1/2" low in the right back corner... if that was actually level, it would help with filling the tanks... I could fill for evaporation once a day... right now, if I filled it enough to only have to do it once a day, it would slightly over flow on that back corner ( it's screened above the tank with the hardware cloth, so no fish get out ) just a little more inconvenient, running 2 minutes of water twice a day... I use that time to add some pellets to the Bichir / Mosquito fish tank, that holds the vegetables & duckweed... if I were to do it again... I would leave the sides higher...

1st picture… the block and tackle systems to raise and hold up the protective screens…giant fish poop sucker on top of the screen on the middle tank…

2nd picture… the reflection of the protective screen, on top of the water… but note only 2 little pieces of the giant duckweed left, from the big scoop pictured, that I put in this morning…

For feeding, I can just lift the screens, but for vacuuming the bottom of the tanks, I need to have them held open… I have been propping them open with a 1 x 2 but that’s risky about knocking it over moving around the 4 foot Long suction tube when cleaning up the bottom, during water changes, and moving the 1 inch hose between the 6 buckets I put on a pallet when I do it

2 more big scoops of giant Duckweed ( Spirodela Polyrhiza ) one in each Tilapia tank, after the Tilapia got their morning pellets before I left for work again today... good thing it reproduces so quickly... I may actually run out, or need to slow down to a 1/2 scoop per day, or every other day, when the plants get to a single layer, slightly spaced, on the surface of the tank I'm growing it in ( they were probably stacked up like 4 - 5 layers thick on the surface on the grow tank, when I started feeding it to the fish )... so I don't know if it slowed down on reproducing when it was "stacked up" but assuming it'll reproduce at it's best, when in a single layer, with at least a little space between plants???

I'm sure the Bichirs in the tank liked the dark water ( there is still a couple spots that are baffled that they could come to the surface ) but to look down through those baffled areas, the water was very dark... even with the tanks being white plastic, 2 sides are up against something limiting the light transmission, & at least initially there was algae growth on the sides of the tank, that limited light transmission... if nothing else, as the duckweed gets thinner, the tank will lighten, so that will help acclimate them to the lighter conditions, for when they move to their aquarium in the house, while the tanks are drained over the winter...

Worked on some wiring today between rain storms… added my rain protection plastic box on the dedicated circuit coming from the garage, and put 3 outlets in it… now my light timer can go into the box, instead of getting wet, when it rains… now I have enough power at hand in case I wanted to add a 3rd Tilapia tank next year

cold front moved through last night... 47 degrees this morning... glad I invested in those big aquarium heaters... the 2 tanks with Tilapia in were a toasty 87 degrees when I fed this morning under the lights... summer is slowly starting to relent... but back to mid 80's all next week...

My net ( new fishing net to catch Tilapia) arrived today… 50 fish In a 3 foot X 4 foot X 3 foot high cube, and neither my wife or I could catch a single fish in an 18 inch net… got close on one, it turned into a flying fish, bounced off my mesh above the tank… ok, give it a rest… I need to suck the bottom of the tanks, but need a new battery in the tractor I use to put all the buckets on, during vacuuming so probably Saturday for that chore

Too hot to spend much time of the roof this last weekend ( doing some reroofing on our house in my spare time ) so I finalized the wiring on my 2nd circuit & installed the light timer in a waterproof box...

with the heat & the fish getting bigger, I decided I did not have enough air circulation so today my new "big" air pump arrived... I was using a normal aquarium pump, but wanting to do 6-4" air stones between the 3 tanks, & trying to pump down 36 inches, the standard pump was struggling... so, I went "large" looking forward to hooking it up this evening...
got the biggest of these...


I can tell the bio load is increasing by the robust growth of the vegetables tomatoes & cucumbers are going crazy right now...

I'm feeding the Tilapia giant duckweed, as fast as it is reproducing... assuming it's growing as good as the tomatoes & cucumbers, still adding a scoop to each tank in the mornings before I go to work...

WOW… just wow… I could see a much more aggressive eating response in just 5 minutes after installing the new air pump, and the additional 2 air stones, that I now have the power to drive…

Today we are about 105 heat index… glad the pump came today… 1st picture shows my air power with 2 less stones, and a normal aquarium pump…. 2nd picture shows my air power with the new pump, and 2 additional air stones