Our Fish

One of the first things we learned was that external water pumps are loud..

So we replaced them with submersible pumps which seem to last longer and makes the atmosphere much more enjoyable.

Then we learned that its really hard to heat water

If you look at the top of the picture you will see a bucket heater that is supposed to get up to 150 degrees...it didn't work...but I'll share later what did. Also notice that at the bottom we made a float out of PVC pipe and a laundry basket to float the submersible pump so it wasn't sitting at the bottom just sucking up debris.

We learned pretty quick that tilapia babies need shallows

So I put floating leaves in the pond so they could hide. Pretty soon we had tons of little babies...most were getting eaten by the adults.
The best leaves to float are banana leaves and Mexican breadfruit leaves.

Eventually I scooped them up and put them in a grow out container.

The containers were attached to the closed loop system.

This is the grown babies...ready for harvest!

I discovered that introducing the babies back into the pond was pretty traumatic, many would die. So for awhile we'd keep them for people who were starting their own systems. Now we have so many fish that we just eat them.

Lots of hungry fish!

We don't eat the Koi.

This is a picture of our pond before we installed our large bio-filter.

Notice how cloudy the water is. We had begun to lose fish.

This is a picture taken recently after feeding the tilapia. Notice the gravel at the bottom. It only takes an hour for the water to get crystal clear now.

Also notice the baby fish swimming with the adults. Tilapia are trainable. We taught the babies to eat on one side of the pond and the adults to eat on the other!