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Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Well this site : https://lakewaytilapia.com/Tilapia-Feeding-Guide.php seems to have all of the information you need to understand how much food it takes to generate useful amounts of Tilapia. Could be combined with an aquaponics set up to do the TCO calculation.

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Duckweed is a good tilapia feed, but requires a nitrogen source. Use it to supplement azola, it has around 4% more protein.

The problem with tilapia is they reach breeding size long before they reach useful eating size. Upon reaching breeding size, they pretty much quit growing and put all their energy into offspring. They are nearly impossible to separate by sex. Commercial tilipia is treated with large doses of hormones to hermaphrodize the fish to a single sex and grow those nice sized fillets.

Something I've wondered is what sort of distribution can you maintain in a Tilapia population. In some fish populations once you get to a certain size those fish can cannibalize the fry such that you get no additional fish regardless of breeding until they are removed. Any thoughts on that?

That doesn't happen in nature because the small fish can fit into hiding spots the large ones can't. That's why people who own ponds toss in things like pallets and felled trees. That'd be easy to replicate.

Fry are typically separated from the larger fish with netting. Sure, you could keep them all together, but a huge amount of system resources will be consumed by the endless cycle of breeding and cannibalizing and you will won't get fish to a useful size.

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