my Tilapia are fighting eachother about time for breeding?

[sonelin]

Is fighting fish a sign of it being about breeding time?



more info about fish.

I have 11 tilapia wintering inside my house in a 55 gal fish aquarium. The fish are between 4’’ and 6’’ in length. They came inside about October as it started to get to cold for them outside.

The (I think males) have started to fight each other. Both open there mouth and touch them then swim at each other to see who is the stronger for a second or two then stop. A few other smaller fish 4’’ or 5’’ ones mostly seem to chill out away from the fighting males (think those are the female ones).

The room where I keep them is about a constent 76ish degrees so the water is always near that temp. the ph is near 6.4, Ammonia is about .25 ( I have not checked Nitrite / Nitrate for a while so not sure on those numbers) every week or two I do 20 gal (of the 55 gal) water change.

I have a 100 gal bio wheel filter, a power head that pulls the waste into the rocks for a 70+ gal tank, and a 100 gal canister filter. I am way overkill on filters but because my tank is overstocked with big fish I wanted to make sure their water is clean.
Just killing time inside till April or so then the fish go back outside in their Aquaponics tank.




I only have one inside fish tank so I can’t separate out a male and the females and most don’t seem big / fat enough to eat just to remove from the system. I am hoping they will make a few babies so that my outdoor tank will get more fish to make waste but is there anything else I can do to help them?

[kellenw]

Hi Brad,

It would be great if you could split the fish up, so you could establish a breeding group with a single male. Any chance you could get another tank? Even a small stock tank?

[sonelin]

I have been keeping my eye out for extra fish tanks that I can pick up but at this time I do not have any.

At some point I will make an indoor Aquaponics system in basement then I can have a very large tank there as well.

[ande]

Hi sonelin
Can't you section the excisting tank?
to split the fish up in groups as a starter
cheers