Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So, I have caught tilapia on lures while fishing but have never had them as pets. For our Environmenal Science class at my high school, we are creating an aquaponics system and I am in charge of the fish, as I am the most knowledged on the subject. However, I know next to nothing about tilapia. So far, I have been very successful in my searches and feel confident about everything except for feed.




For 15 fingerling Mozambique tilapia, how much/what type of feed/how often should we feed them. Links and general advice would be very greatly appreciated.

Thanks all for the help.

All mine have been captive bred, and used to pellet feed. Yours may or may not accept pellet food. Feed them a small pellet size 3-4 times per day. Better to underfeed then overfeed. maker sure they eat all feed in 10-15 minutes, and get floating feed- it's much easier to tell if they eat it all. If they don't accept feed, try with holding food for a few days. They can live for a few weeks without food, so don't worry about a few days.

Seeing how this is a school project, I would recommend Black Soldier Fly pupae as feed. Schools generate a lot of food waste, and it could be utilized as food for the larvae of the Black Soldier Fly. It would add another layer to the learning experience.

I feed my blues, Oreochromis aureus, a diet that is close to 90% BSF pupae. I have 30 juveniles and adults and feed them anywhere between 8 to 16 ounces a day. I will supplement pellets when harvesting of the BSF is low.

If you are buying them from a local aquaponics store or pond stocking place they are going to be feed trained. You can ask the supplier what they use.

For tilapia i would use an omnivore feed 32-36% protein. I dont "recommend" any specific brand but i use purina because it's easy to source, the dealers are everywhere. Even if the dealer does not carry the omnivore grower 4000 you can order it and have it delivered for free on their next supply truck.

BSF are a fine supplemental feed but unless your school already has a program doing this it's way outside the scope of your project.
*ahem*... I mean... why dont you raise chickens for meat and eggs and why not a goat or two? You could learn more!

_________________
brian cotton
5000+gallon backyard system
700 gallon ferrocement system
Reproducing Sunfish (Bluegill/Redear/Crappie)
Feed training Crappie
Breeding tilapia

I agree. Why not breed and raise zebras and elephants? Seriously, we are talking about larvae. BSF as a supplement? What is it lacking that pellets contain? Crude Fiber? I am sure fish need this crude fiber that is not supplied by BSF. What is Crude Fiber? GMO soybean meal and ground corn. That brings me to an irony promoted by the AP community. Our veggies are better than organic. How is that when most of the pellets on the market are laced with GMO's.

I think it would benefit the youth more to learn about sustainabilty by growing fish food from human food waste, rather than make them dependant on Montsanto. But then again, from what I read on these forums it isnt about people feeding themselves, it is just another pyramid scheme.

Any one food source is not going to be a complete diet. Pick the most healthy human food you can think of (apples? avacodos? spinach?) and if it's the only thing you eat, you are going to start having deficiencies somewhere.

You can also look up research.


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... ces+to+you

regarded catfish and blue tilapia:
"Feeding 100% larvae did not provide sufficient dry matter or protein intake for good growth for either species grown in tanks (trials 2 and 3). "


You can step off your soap box because i completely understand that commonly available fish foods are not organic or sustainable and i am not the people preaching as much so be careful who you pigeon hole. And we havent even talked about providing proper micronutrients for your aquaponic plants. Are you going to manage and supplement these manually?


It is certainly possible and may be a neat project to raise enough food to feed your tilapia but it's going to need to be a diverse food strategy. Perhaps, minnows, bsf, some plants like duckweed and maybe crayfish, earthworms, etcs...

Keep in mind that feeding fish live foods like this typically take about 10 lbs of live food for every 1 lb of tilapia growth... where if you get properly formulated pellet food designed for your species you can get very good feed conversion rates close to 1:1 or even better (source "small scall aquactulture" by Steven D. Van Gorder.

But i digress, the student asked a simple question requiring a simple answer which has already been provided.

_________________
brian cotton
5000+gallon backyard system
700 gallon ferrocement system
Reproducing Sunfish (Bluegill/Redear/Crappie)
Feed training Crappie
Breeding tilapia

Coming from the person who couldn't just make a suggestion, but had to down play someone elses suggestion and compare that suggestion to something akin to animal husbandry or space exploration.

lol, at least you understand how unrelated your suggestion was to the OP's question...

I like how you ignored all the information and facts i provided that proved as much and went straight for the butt hurt response.

_________________
brian cotton
5000+gallon backyard system
700 gallon ferrocement system
Reproducing Sunfish (Bluegill/Redear/Crappie)
Feed training Crappie
Breeding tilapia

I guess I missed the part where the OP asked about good growth.

Of course you didnt complete the quote from the study, which suggested that chopping up the larvae improved weight gain and utilization.

So you used a contextomy to claim that I presented a red herring. That is lame.

It is funny how you talk of food diversity only after recommending a diverse diet of soy meal, ground corn and a one a day.



Doesn't just about everyone do this? The most frequent discussion on this and other forums are deficiencies. What are the plants needing besides GMO soy and corn? Poultry by-products? Presevatives? Mineral oil? All of which can be found in many commercial feeds. I am sure good growth is worth this kind of nutritional diversity.

What you failed to point out with the study that you cited, that the study was an aquaculture study, not an AP study. It fails to point out possible mineral or micro-nutrient deficiencies in waste from fish fed a BSF larvae or pupae diet.

In closing I am going to leave you with a quote from the study that you negected to share, then I am done with this conversation and you."with the increasing price of fish meal and fish oil, fly prepupae may be an economical and sustainable feedstuff for carnivorous fish diets. In areas where there is an aquaculture industry in close proximity to intensive agriculture facilities, fly larvae could be used to reduce animal waste (fish offal and manure) and provide a good-quality protein and fat source for the aquaculture industry"


And I provided it...

I honestly don't agree with the blanket 'GMO is horrible' statement. It comes across as a lot more scare mongering, than proper science.

Genetic modification has been happening for thousands of years, compare corn with it's original parent plant, and they are nothing alike. Or that cauilflower/brocilli/cabbage/brussel sprouts all come from a main plant and have been modified to bring out different traits until they are what they are today.

It's just now, we can make this process happen far faster, and create far different result. It doesn't mean everything that's been created is bad and evil and going to kill you.

If they create a type of tomato that can handle and thrive in cool conditions, it could be snowing, and the tomatoes are still producing, I'd be jumping in line to try them out. They'd create jobs, increase food production, while reducing costs of transport for said tomatoes.

Or pest & disease resistance, a farmer could plant a crop, and it's got a stronger natural resistance, it'd mean they don't have to spray chemicals on the food you eat, the chemicals then don't get left in the soil, kill the bee population, leaves the worms alone, etc.

There does need to be safe guards in place though, to make sure a certain plant isn't killing off all the worms, or bees, or creating a chemical that'll affect people in some bad way, and if people are too scared of it in general, they won't understand it and control it properly.

GMO food isn't going anywhere, and it shouldn't be treated like the evil boogyman that's secretly trying to kill you. In my opinion, that's just scare mongering by the media and people on soap boxes. I'm quite happy to have GMO soy or corn meal in my fish food, it means less fish taken and blended up from the ocean, but if they can add black soldier larve to my fish food and keep the nutrient profiles the fish need, then I'm happy with that too.

But back to the original question, you can try to wean them onto pellets, get something like frozen bloodworms (from aquariums), and feed them that with pellets. Gradually reduce the amount of blood worms, and increase the pellets.

_________________
My System

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Maybe you should suggest people feed their fish Styrofoam.. i mean they didnt say they want good growth, or nutritional value.. lol






yah i didnt paste the whole article abstract because it's not necessary and nowhere did it say BSF is a balanced fish food.




Not at all, you did that yourself and continue to do so.





Like almost everything you say, this is wildly inaccurate. The main ingredient in aquamax is fish meal. Also you say this in a negative tone but it seems positive to me. Purina adds some soy and corn products, vitamins and minerals which adds nutritional value. I done see that as a bad thing.



In a commercial aspect i am certain every aspect of water quality is tightly controlled but speaking from a backyard/hobby pov.. no. We check ammonia, nirrites, ph and maybe nitrates and phosphates. maybe add a tablespoon of iron chelate every year or so... and just kind of cowboy the rest of it by guesswork or reading the plants after deficiencies show up.




plants need nitrates, phosphorus and potassium in large quantities and countless micronutrients including boron, zinc, iron, magnesium, calcium, etc. Most of which are present in a BALANCED COMMERCIAL FISH FOOD.





This may be news to some people but Aquaponics is the marriage of aquaculture and hydroponics. Someday it may change but right now there is a lot more research in the individual aquaculture and hydroponics disciplines than the combined aquaponics discipline and the aquaculture research is still very much relevant. Especially when we are talking specifically about fish nutrition and fish health, which again, is why i pointed out that we havent even begun talking about plant health [partially because it was out of scope of our discussion but it was also out of the scope of the relevant information]



Yah, they are saying that BSF could be used as one ingredients in a BALANCED COMMERCIAL FISH FOOD. if it could replace fish meal it could be the main ingredient, but in no way is there any evidence or suggestion that BSF by itself is or could be a sufficient fish diet.




Lol, what planet are you on? maybe english isnt your first language and you are misunderstanding of the meaning some of the words we are using.

_________________
brian cotton
5000+gallon backyard system
700 gallon ferrocement system
Reproducing Sunfish (Bluegill/Redear/Crappie)
Feed training Crappie
Breeding tilapia

Says the expert who cherry picks aquaculture studies on carnivorous fish.

How about we end this at you feeding your fish chicken by-products, soy, corn and mineral oil and I will feed mine creepy crawlies. And you leave the complicated business of farming maggots to us rocket scientist. TPerhaps the OP can read around your constant negativity and trolling to make a choice, or better yet, find a similar thread that you havent hijacked.

One thing is for certain, this thread has taught us all to actually read up on anything that you cherry pick, uh, I mean cite.

I thought you were done with this thread? Please stop, every post you provide more inaccurate advice and misinformation.


The study is one of the main articles listed in the bibliography of the BSF page on http://www.feedipedia.org/ which is a joint venture between several french government organizations and the united nations (FAO). It was taken from the section on fish. Specifically channel catfish and blue tilapia... both of which are omnivorous.


Since this language of english continues to baffle you... Carnivorous is mainly meat eating while omnivorous means both meat and plants. Like tilapia..

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

_________________
brian cotton
5000+gallon backyard system
700 gallon ferrocement system
Reproducing Sunfish (Bluegill/Redear/Crappie)
Feed training Crappie
Breeding tilapia

I agree with Colum on the GMO scare. It amazes me to see people picketing and yelling "Down with Monsanto" and " GMO kills" when they have absolutely no idea the science behind GMO. People talking about GMO tomatoes, lettuce, and oranges. While I certainly don't agree with Monsanto or Syngenta's business tactics involving seed distribution and saving, the SCIENCE behind the companies could drastically help the coming problems with feeding billions of people in the coming decades. What would take hybridizers decades to accomplish can be accomplished in weeks in a lab.

Actually, cotton. I should have ditched this convo at your "butt hurt" remark. That in itself screamed childish and I should have seen it for the red flag that is was.