Sunday, June 15, 2008

No tilapia this year

Well, I've given up on the tilapia. No word from Foster Pond and Lake, and another blogger sent me an email advising me that I'd never be able to find large tilapia this late that people would be willing to part with. So, we went to Petsmart and bought 30 goldfish. At $0.28/fish, the price was right! Obviously, we don't plan on eating them, so unfortunately, our system will not be a fully functional aquaponics system - more like a water garden/hydroponic veggie garden. Oh well, maybe next year...

Here are some photos. One thing that seems certain - yellow squash seem to like the set up, and so do tomatoes.
The residents - one koi, one comet, and 30 goldfish

Yellow squash raging

Tomatoes doing well

Flowers from a water plaintain, planted in the pond gravel

2 comments:

John Batzel said...

Greetings. In my dabblings, I'd looked at aquaculture before (and still dust off the ideas now and again). One thing I'd found was a source of breeders to produce your own tilapia fry. Did you consider that, by any chance? It does add somewhat to your costs, but may help. A link I have is for the Pennyfish from Mike Sipe: http://www.cherrysnapper.com/Ordering+Information/0.html

JBB

Brian Naess said...

Thanks for the suggestion! The thing is that tilapia won't survive the winters in NC, so I'd have to set up a breeding tank/setup indoors, and I definitely do not have the space for it. So, alas, I'm relegated to depending on chance and trying to get fingerlings as soon as possible in late spring/early summer, feed the heck out of them, and then hope they're big, fat, and delicious come fall.

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