Tilapia... Breeding & raising fry ( is this where this thread belongs??? )

so I'm raising Blue Tilapia for food right now in an aquaculture set up... the fingerlings were very expensive for as small as they were, & them being an edible fish... the cost means more, on an edible, than it would for a fancy aquarium fish... so I'm starting to do my research...

I understand they are supposed to be easy to breed... I have a couple empty aquariums ( the 65 gallon would likely be most applicable ) & I would like to find a breed-able pair as I start harvesting this fall ( I live in MN & the outside growing season is short ) so I thought I'd find a pair that would spawn, & keep them separate ( with a tank divider ) until late winter, & try to get a batch of fry early spring... & start growing them in a tank, then when it's warm enough to restart my outside tank set up, move them outside...

it would be great if I had the advice of anyone with experience raising mouth brooders... I'm hoping to catch them just right, to move outside & start growing them next summer, without them getting stunted by keeping them in a smaller tank too long... I've got a fair amount of experience with tanks & cichlids ( even bred... kind of accidentally a pair of Convicts in the past )

anyone want to help out???
for instance questions... Fry Food... Tilapia are vegetarians, not really omnivores... Purina makes a fry powder that the reputable supplier I used for Fingerlings this year, uses in house ( they don't sell it, but I found some for sale on e-bay )... I'm starting to raise Grindle worms, & hatching brine shrimp... which might be applicable to most fry, but not sure if Tilapia fry will eat them, or I'd need a fry food powder???

but my Aquaculture set up could handle as many as 150 fish to raise right now, but could be expandable easily to take 300... so somewhere in that range would be what I'd be looking for by spring... heard Tilapia can lay a lot of eggs

I have bred mouthbrooding relatives of Tilapia. I think you have an Oreochromis (In many books as Saratherodon species), right? Working with the Latin name is the only way to get accurate info.
I happen to have the bible of west and central African fish here (A Lamboj's 'The Cichlid Fish of Western Africa'), since these fish are what I have been into for years. There are variations in the breeding - so the real name will help, if you can make an educated guess through google images of "oreochromis".

Aquaculture sources sometimes sell O. aureus and Mozambicus crosses. The common names can vary from dealer to dealer. It's a big family, but noit many are in aquaculture.

Because of their size and aquarium aggression, they aren't in the hobby much.

Mine are supposed to be pure Strain of O. Aureus

There shouldn't be any real price difference in aquarium fish vs aquaculture fish. If there is, the aquaculture company is simply ripping you off.

Tilapia live in groups with a dominant male and a group of females. He will breed with any female that is in condition. The females look after the eggs and babies for a month and then might breed again a few weeks after that.

If you want to breed them, let them grow u and put 1 male and 4 or 5 females in a tank and leave them there. Have several tanks set up like this and you will get plenty of young.

Feed the babies on newly hatched brineshrimp and have live lants and algae for them to pick at. Then just grow them on.

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You can extend the growing season outdoors but putting a greenhouse over the pond/s or using a solar heater for the pond. Insulating the top of the pond with bubblewrap will also help warm the water.

The info below is based on the Anton Lamboj book. He is the best accessible source on these fish.

O. aureus males dig shallow pits, and females, who shoal, come in to spawn. In an aquarium, the set up can't always work that way, though a 2 metre tank with sand would be fine. You can't really have a shoal of females.

As soon as the eggs are laid, the female picks them up in her mouth, a couple of hundred at a time. By the time the spawning is done, you can have a couple of thousand of them with large females. At 25 to 27c, the fry can be out and swimming in 13-14 days. They are omnivores with a preference for vegetable matter.

Oreochromis have a neat quirk. They can come from very crowded, not clean conditions in nature, and they can slow growth in response. In crowded conditions, or in a 65 gallon, they will dwarf themselves, growing very slowly. There's an overall myth in our hobby that fish only grow to the size of their tank, and it's usually untrue. With Oreochromis, it is true. Lamboj reports having pairs only 8-10 cm long, at 3-5 years of age, happily breeding away. The young, put into larger bodies of water, will grow to normal sizes.

Anton Lamboj, The Cichlid Fishes of Western Africa, Birgit Schmettkampf Verlag, Bornheim, Germany, 2004, ISBN 3-928819-33-X. Pages 35-37.

So this is long winded, but I would choose my breeders as soon as you can sex them. Get them out of the group to use the growth thing, Maybe six fish? I'd think about trios in 2 or 3 tanks. You'll have to learn to time the arrival of fry so they don't start to stunt over winter. I wonder if goldfish flake, which is cheap and can be bought in bulk would do? It plant based, full of fibre and decent quality. Flake though, not pellets.

I kept a Coptodon species for several years. They are a small member of the Tilapia group, not in the food fish category. They ate anything, even as fry, grew fast (though they are an 8-10cm max fish) and were easy except they tended to jump out of tanks at feeding time.

If three or four females give you 5000 fry, you'll have choices to make. Don't let them near natural water bodies. They could cause ecological mayhem for native species over a summer, before the winter killed them.

Heating that water might not make them cost effective, but I like that project and I hope you keep us posted on its progress!

thanks guys... I put that book on my buy list on Amazon... always good to have good reference materials...

because of the shear numbers of possible eggs / fry... I was thinking of just trying to do a pair of females & one male... unless there is excessive aggression by the smaller group ( the supplier of my fish also sells "selected" breeding "colonies" of 1 male & 4 females... at very "selected" prices... I was hoping to try just the 3 fish to cut down on excess of eggs & fry... as I couldn't handle more than a couple 100, & I'm not looking to be a fingering seller... although I can probably give away 100 or so to friends, & if things didn't work out, I'd just have to buy fingerlings next spring... hoping to hold the fish ( maybe just the male??? ) separated until the right time ( later winter here, I think ) so I don't get any stunting from holding the fry / fingerlings too long, before going to the bigger tanks... while the tank size must have something to do with stunting, I got the impression from supplier, that it was also feed quality & not getting put on grower volumes of feed soon enough, that caused the stunting... that was ( Lakeway Tilapia ) ( they provide a lot of every kind of information on their web site, & in studying before I bought, they were not the cheapest, but seemed most knowledgeable, & shared that knowledge on their website... linked here...


if you read through their site a few times like I have, there is a lot of information there, on the whole Tilapia industry

they do have a section on sexing them ( not as easy as looking at the big ones as being male ) I'm hoping to do that around harvest time in the fall, & I won't be looking for the prettiest but looking for the largest, solid looking stock, to breed

even with all that Lakeway says they do prior to the sale, & what I've been doing to make sure the smaller fish get enough food... there are still a couple runts ( or stunted fish ) in my tanks... while the basic population has been doubling in size, at this stage, every week, there is at least 1 in each tank, that has only doubled in size, since I got them ( going on 4 weeks ) I'm keeping an eye on those, & if they can't keep up, they will likely be culled... it's only 2-3 fish out of 100+ fish... expected growing rates by age are also covered on their site, & I'm currently achieving maximum growth

Sneaky critters… I have fry… seen at least 8 or 10