Tilapia not eating duckweed...

[lobitonomada]

Howdy friends.
I was wondering why my ditch tilapia don't want to eat duckweed?...almost 1 month since I caught them and did not eat for over 1 week and then I started feeding them koi feed and they love it but won't eat anything else and I would love to feed them some home grown duckweed.
Any suggestions?

Mahalo

[GaryD]

Hi Mahalo,

Have you considered withholding the koi feed and just giving them the duckweed? They might prefer koi food but, if there's nothing else, they may switch to duckweed once they get hungry.

Gary

[arachdog]

Or start mixing duckweed in with the koi feed. Slowly increasing the percentage of duckweed.

[lobitonomada]

Mahalo for the quick replies.
I've been doing that for the last couple of days but I don't see them eat the duckweed.
Do you guys mix it with something else to make it more attractive?
We just caught some 15 more tilapia over the weekend making it 36 total for our 300 gal. FT
It seems like we have different kind of tilapia, the wife caught 3 big black ones with a net, they would not take the bait but they were so mellow and docile and I feel a little worried about them and wonder if they are ok.
will post some pics and please let me know if they are a good kind to grow on my FT.

[arachdog]

I'd say you have to mix it well enough so that they don't have a choice. Perhaps add a bit of water to the feed to soften it up and allow better mixing. I should probably mention that I've never actually done this (or even seen a tilapia for that matter) but its a well known strategy for weaning fry onto pelletized food. I can't see why it wouldn't work.

[DaveOponic]

Howdy friends.
I was wondering why my ditch tilapia don't want to eat duckweed?...almost 1 month since I caught them and did not eat for over 1 week and then I started feeding them koi feed and they love it but won't eat anything else and I would love to feed them some home grown duckweed.
Any suggestions?

Mahalo

My Tilapia eat mainly pellets. I tried feeding them water hyacinth at one stage and they will eat the roots and kill the plants but it just gets too messy in the tank. I have never seen them eating algae, the sucker fish do but they also prefer pellets.

My Tilapia are silvery grey in colour with some beautiful green highlights. I guess they are a hybrid type. the original ones I bought from an aquarium shop and most I have now are bred in my pond, probably 3rd or 4th generation by now. I have seen pink Tilapia here and some white and blotchy ones too but never seen the really black Tilapia in your photo.

Dave

[Ravnis]

I've had to change my food on my tilapia 3 different times. Each time I changed pellets they would not eat it for a day or two. After a week they would eat it like crazy. Might try feeding only duckweed and nothing else for a day or two.

[Andy Smith]

You better call or email Tim at Friendly Aquaponics about duckweek. He is really negative about duckweed and had to clense his whole system and get rid of it all. Good Luck Andy

[GaryD]

Hi,

Given that he runs raft systems, I can understand why Tim wouldn't want it in the system. It would grow right throughout the system and make a big mess in the raft tanks.

His system is also commercial and, if I recall correctly, it's certified organic. He may be concerned about the transfer of harmful organisms on the duckweed.

In a media-based system, it's a different matter entirely. You can control its movement within the system much more effectively and some species (particularly Jade perch) will eat a lot of it so it can be used as a dietary supplement. Duckweed should be treated like any other introduced organism.....it should be sourced from a healthy system and quarantined in circumstances that allow you to determine that it is not going to be problematic.

Gary

[POC3442]

So do you guys just feed them the cheapest the floating fish food you can find? the only fish food I could see that they would want to eat according to people is purina trout chow. I'm here in the states but about to get my fish sometime this month after I cycle my system with ammonia.

[Damon]

yes, while at friendly aquaponics i've had to clean duck weed out of system troughs and both of the breeding tanks on the friendly aquaponics farm. like i've said in other posts, duckweed is not the way to go. if you weigh the pros vs. the cons it's not worth it, and only a lucky few haven't experienced problems YET.

For starters, duck weed isn't exactly detrimental to the fish, but it's like only feeding your kids bread and water... yeah they will survive... but not at their healthiest...

Secondly, if you're using a fully flooded system like in raft aquaponics, you're going to have trouble... keeping the growth of duckweed in check and contained is nearly impossible in these types of systems, and you're most likely going to kill everything you have and have to start over.

And lastly, if we are doing aquaponics for the of providing food and preserving the envrioment and energy usage while doing so, we shouldn't abuse our fish by starving them and feeding them crap food... I'm not really the touchy feely "tree hugger" type... but to maximize fish size and growth rate feed them the correct food. the brand of fish food we used on the friendly aquaponics farm is Rangen pelleted fish food. it floats. the fish easily train to eat it, and it provides the right amount of nutrients to grow giant tilapia. i know this from seeing it. we trained fry to eat it around 2-3 weeks after their hatch, the fish go nuts when we fed them, and if you've ever seen into the fish tanks on their farm... some of the tilapia are closing on 5-6lbs.

It wasn't a cross contamination that we were worried about on the friendly farm.

Rampant duckweed sucks the available nutrients out of the water, stealing from the lettuce. also the duck weed had a bad habit of dyeing all at once and turing the system anaerobic over night killing 90% of the fish in the tanks.

The only contamination problem i can remember them being fearful off was from a legal standpoint. when you put the contents of a product you are legally bound to what the list of ingredients are. like if you say you're using natural sugar and you get caught using corn syrup. same as lettuce. the duck weed would get onto the lettuce and if some of it made its way to the store shelves mixed in with the lettuce... well... an extra ingredient is just as unlawful and a substation or omission. if the duckweed carried any viruses it wouldn't have been the duckweed's fault, for if it had something, then by proxy it was already present in the system because that's where it grew.

[POC3442]

This is the only thread I could find mentioning floating pellets for Tilapia...not going to use Duckweed just much easier to buy the fish food. Looks like it's going to be Aqua max 500...and I'll have to grind it down until they get big enough to eat it that size.

[kellenw]

A lot of people use a really high quality pellet food and supplement with other food items. We use www.premiumfishfood.com in our tilapia hatchery.

[POC3442]

A lot of people use a really high quality pellet food and supplement with other food items. We use www.premiumfishfood.com in our tilapia hatchery.

Is it ok to buy a larger pellet size and grind it down yourself to feed to the fish? I will be getting my Tilapia at 2 or 3". I will only have 50 Tilapia in my setup and since this is my first time I have no clue how much they will be eating in their smaller stages. I would prefer to just buy Ultimate Growout Pellets and grind them so the fish can eat them until they reach 6 inches and can feed normally on the Untilate Growout Pellets. Or do you think getting the Tilapia Combo Pack #3 which s 9lbs of fingerling pellets and 9lbs of intermediate pellets last them until I can switch them to the Ultimate Growout Pellets?

My thought was buy food that they eat around 5-8 inches and grind it down until they can eat that size and stick with that pellet size until harvest.

P.S. Just wish your guys hatchery was about 3 hours closer to me. :(

[Damon]

im not sure, i'm just throwing this out there to try... but sometimes when a fish food has been floating for a bit it start to break apart... add the saturation effect to the striking power of the little guys and they might just be able to blast pieces of the fish food apart...

5/8 inch food is pretty big for any kind of fish compared to mouth size. and when you consider your portion control... the smaller the initial pellet the better in this sense. i'd try 1/4" - 3/8" food. this will be a good range to allow the little guys to fit their food in their mouth and still feed your larger fish...

when you're feeding stock, the size of each isn't relevant. (other than being to big to eat) when it comes to feeding large amounts of fish, 10lbs of fish food is always going to be 10lbs. the size of the pellet wont change that. aim for what's easily consumable by your type of fish. even the 4-5lb tilapia were eating the smaller sized pellets, they were just eating more of them. basically we're comparing rice crispies to captain crunch, different sized pebbles of goodness, but it fills you up all the same.

[POC3442]

im not sure, i'm just throwing this out there to try... but sometimes when a fish food has been floating for a bit it start to break apart... add the saturation effect to the striking power of the little guys and they might just be able to blast pieces of the fish food apart...

5/8 inch food is pretty big for any kind of fish compared to mouth size. and when you consider your portion control... the smaller the initial pellet the better in this sense. i'd try 1/4" - 3/8" food. this will be a good range to allow the little guys to fit their food in their mouth and still feed your larger fish...

when you're feeding stock, the size of each isn't relevant. (other than being to big to eat) when it comes to feeding large amounts of fish, 10lbs of fish food is always going to be 10lbs. the size of the pellet wont change that. aim for what's easily consumable by your type of fish. even the 4-5lb tilapia were eating the smaller sized pellets, they were just eating more of them. basically we're comparing rice crispies to captain crunch, different sized pebbles of goodness, but it fills you up all the same.

Love the cereal analogy! Thanks.

[kellenw]

Is it ok to buy a larger pellet size and grind it down yourself to feed to the fish? I will be getting my Tilapia at 2 or 3". I will only have 50 Tilapia in my setup and since this is my first time I have no clue how much they will be eating in their smaller stages. I would prefer to just buy Ultimate Growout Pellets and grind them so the fish can eat them until they reach 6 inches and can feed normally on the Untilate Growout Pellets. Or do you think getting the Tilapia Combo Pack #3 which s 9lbs of fingerling pellets and 9lbs of intermediate pellets last them until I can switch them to the Ultimate Growout Pellets?

My thought was buy food that they eat around 5-8 inches and grind it down until they can eat that size and stick with that pellet size until harvest.

P.S. Just wish your guys hatchery was about 3 hours closer to me. :(


Sure, it's no problem to grind down pellet food. I would suggest using something with a little higher protein and fat for them at first though. Ultimate is a really low fat finishing food. It's excellent for that purpose, but younger tilapia will benefit from a higher protein and higher fat food. It looks like the combo you mentioned would be just about perfect for your situation. That's just about the right amount of each of those foods for 50 tilapia.

[Damon]

also when feeding any size of fish community you want to try to hit the magic grey zone. this will take some tweaking on the feeders part, but it's very useful.

The magic grey zone is the amount of food the adequately feeds your fish without over feeding them. you want to put an amount of food in the tank that the fish will consume in about 2-4 minutes. if they go through it faster than that there might be some fish left hungry, and if it lasts too long, the food will saturate, sink, and left to rot. fish are funny about the food they eat. if they're used to eating a moving target, there's a good chance they wont eat it if it sit son the bottom.

The problem this causes is that with anything that rots an anaerobic environment will begin to form. too much rotting stuff will zap the D.O. right out of the system, as well as leave a lovely sludge that will perfectly tea through filters and mechanics like it's its job. now if you have some sort of bottom feeder like prawns or gammarus the sinking food could be consumed, but still, too much for them to handle and your right back to just simply over feeding your system.

[POC3442]

Kellenw....check your PM's my fish supplier is shutting down for the winter to increase their capacity...so I'm looking for a new supplier and your guys price seems reasonable.

[kellenw]

PM sent. :)