At the end of February this year, we received fifteen 2" White Nile Tilapia from White Brook Tilapia Farm to start our new aquaponics experiment. This fish were healthy and grew fast. At the the beginning of May, we sexed the fish and reduced the total to 8. We are hoping to end up with 2 males and 6 females out of this mix but we'll know the actual count soon enough.
Judging by their activity, we are getting ready to have Tilapia babies and we are excited! As long as we get one breeding pair out of the 8 fish we will be fine as they lay eggs about every 6 weeks and start out laying 30-50 eggs at a time. In the wild, the survival rate is only about 1%, however, in captivity, it is more like 95%. We will have more fish than we can use very soon.
Our goal is to set up three 250 gallon tanks to grow out our fish and run part of the water through deep channel tanks with floating beds to raise whatever vegetables we can get during the season. In north Georgia that will be about 7 months out of the year. We have been told that these fish will reach 1+ pound in that time so we are hoping to eventually coordinate the grow-out period and the fish raising period to coincide so that we can let the grow-out operation die down to a minimal size during the colder winter months to avoid the extra costs of heating the three tanks.
Our breeding operation is maintained in my basement where the temperature is constant and the conditions can be easily monitored. We are also going to have a small aquaponic setup on the breeder tank to give us year-round salad mixes!
I will post some pictures of our fish operation soon. Feel free to write with any questions or suggestions at waltersingingr@gmail.com.
God bless,
Wally
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