Tilapia with endlers… stress or ok?

[Endlersendlers]

From my experience with Tilapia, I see no slow picking. Once they discover the food source, they clean it out and move on.

If you posed it as "Can my endlers be fed to Tilapia?" you would have a point. If you maintain illusions about having some sort of community based on nature, that's not legit. I don't recall you talking about getting rid of all your endler's. Should you decide to, Tilapia are one method. What you do with Tilapia in a tank the size of yours is a whole other issue. As a choice it's an interesting one.

Using feeders? If it's planned, fair enough. If it's unplanned, it's an ugly mistake. You don't seem interested in keeping and breeding a Tilapia colony, whichever member of the group you have. Correct me if I'm wrong there and you are conditioning them for breeding. You were thinking they were vegetarian. By preference, they are mostly herbivores, but they take what they can get, happily. Your original post has drifted a long way off in the rear view mirror. You were looking for a convenient way to keep 2 species, from what I saw.
Whichever of the 2 you keep, enjoy.

Yes, I did drift quite a bit. I have 7 tanks and a pond. Tilapia only in the pond now, 2 outdoor tanks with mixed grow outs in one, mutt endlers in another; indoors a community and bachelor-endler tank; and 4 variety-specific endler tanks.

No I did not intend to feed endlers to tilapia and if as you say tilapia clean out a food source once discovered, we could probably conclude I intervened in time since they were multiplying like crazy.

As an aside, whether they are planned or unplanned feeders may make a difference to us but not to the fish being eaten.

I appreciate your telling me (actually it was first@Colin_T, to share credit where it’s due) what was happening or bound to happen with the situation as it was. I’m glad I was able to intervene and I think the outcome was a success as I did not want my precious endlers becoming snacks or living in fear. The poorly thought out act of putting them in with tilapia did buy time to enable me to get established with a few LFS I can sell or donate them to, and now order has been restored.

I asked the question because I wanted to know, and you gave me an honest response. From that I could make an educated decision. At that point the priority was about the fishes’ quality of lives. At some point, yes, my ego or pride came back into play to want to say wait, was this so horrible? It was a well-intentioned act but doesn’t worse happen on a regular basis, whether in nature or by humans? Does a gazelle feel comforted that it is a lion attacking it and not a tiger from another continent that doesn’t even belong there? I dare say the feelings on the situation are the same, although admittedly it is unfair to have an unknown entity attack that they maybe didn’t have the instinct to try to evade.

I am told I think too much. It’s not a reflection on your input but I look at one side and then the other, trying both sides of most any issue because the truth isn’t only the first place you look and most things are complicated.