This is why we do it:

Friendly Aquaponics, Inc, is our Farmily

All photos and text copyright 2008-2014 Friendly Aquapoonics, Inc, Susanne Friend, and Tim Mann 1
Where Do You Get The
Fish To Stock With? Stocking
With Fry
 Stock with fish you are sure of. If you
bring diseased fish into your system it
may be difficult to get the disease out.
 Buy fry and raise them to 2-3”
fingerlings in a separate tank before
putting them into the rearing tank with Large 2
big fish, or buy fingerlings. Fingerling
 For about $1,500 you can put together
a simple but fairly effective hatchery
system.

2
Why Breed YOUR Own?

Quality Control

3
Lined corrugated steel breeding tanks
with hapa liners are cheap and effective
Put 30 females and 15
males in a 12-foot diameter
tank inside the hapa

Female on right, male on left.

Males have two orifices, females
have three.
 Breeding Tank Setup

Tilapia females typically produce 500-700 eggs once to twice a year. In the
wild, she lays them in shallow depressions she makes in the sand or mud in
shallow water. The male then fertilizes them, and the female takes them
into her mouth to protect them until they hatch and become swimup fry.
Hatching and development process
To the left is a sac fry: a tiny tail
and head attached to a big
reservoir of nutrients that this
little fish will use to grow to
swim-up fry size in the next few
days.

To the right are about 764

swim-up fry in a 5-gallon
bucket; they are about 3/8 of
an inch long.
 Hatching and development process

Compare the size of this monster’s finger to the size of

these swim-up fry; they have just used up their egg sacs.
Conventional “river-style” tilapia hatchery
(Left) Large open-water
facility, NOT expensive, but
requires a river or a large
pond(s) with a goodly sized
stream flowing through them.

(Right) Tanks for raising

fingerling tilapia, hatchery
tanks in background, much
more expensive to build
and maintain.
Conventional “factory-style” tilapia hatchery
(Left) Large expensive facility,
lots of open floor space: a
good place to hold the
Saturday night dance! But NOT
an economical way to raise
tilapia!

(Below) Tank with hapa

liner being harvested
 What If You Don’t
Have A Hatchery
 Nearby? New
Hatchery consists of one to two 9-12’ diameter
tanks with hapas inside. Breeding fish are in Technology
one or both tanks, tanks also have fine-mesh floating
cages inside for holding fry (+- 3,000 fry in each cage).
 Fry have access to good natural feed (algae
in the greenwater), and do not need to be fed.
 With three or four 300-800 gallon tanks for a nursery,
you have an 8,000-14,000-fish-per-month production 10
capacity.
 How Do Tilapia Fry
Survive The First
Week? New
Knowedge, New
Technology
 Tilapia fry need to eat for the first week of their lives,
but haven’t learned how yet! In a natural green-water
environment, they are swimming in shrimp-amd-
vegetable soup and can’t AVOID eating. Our egg
hatchery has a 95% survival rate.
 Tilapia fry in clear water in standard commercia
11
hatcheries experience up to 75% mortality due to being
(Left) The floating frame
for the swimup fry in the
greenwater tank.

(Above) The smallest fry

and sac fry all go in the
floating frame in the
greenwater tank.

(Left) The floating frame with

swimup fry learning how to
eat in the greenwater tank.
Harvesting Process
Mature breeding tank with
floating frame and water
hyacinth

Beginning fry harvest by

rolling hapa over a piece
of 3” PVC pipe, creating
2 “bags” on either side
Harvesting Process
3” PVC pipe rolled to other
side of tank; removing
breeder fish and 8” PVC pipe
habitats and moving to
“bag” on other side of pipe
Harvesting Process
Dunking the net full of
breeders to stress them and
make the females “spit” their
eggs out on this side’s bag
Harvesting Process
Finishing fry
harvest: bag is
smaller now, and
only fry and eggs
are inside

Finishing fry harvest: bag

is smaller now, and only
fry and eggs are inside
 Harvesting Process
Finishing fry harvest: bag is
smaller now, and fry and eggs
are ready to be netted out and
size-graded (there are
THOUSANDS more to the right
of this part of the bag)

Each net full of fry goes into 1/8-

inch mesh size-grading cone first
to remove smallest fry.
 Harvesting Process
Each net full of fry goes into 1/8-
inch mesh size-grading cone first
to remove smallest fry; they
naturally swim downwards
through the mesh into the
bucket below.

Then you take the bucket full

of up to 3-4,000 swimup fry
and dump it (gently!) into the
floating frame in one of the
greenwater tanks.
 Harvesting Process
What gets caught by the
1/8-inch mesh size-grading
cone goes into the 1/4-inch
mesh size-grading cone
NEXT to remove 3/4 inch to
1 inch fry

What’s left in the 1/4-inch

mesh size-grading cone is 1-
1/4 inch and bigger. These get
sorted by hand and go into a
nursery tank that has the
same size fish in it
 (Below) A gorgeous 2-
1/2 month old fingerling

(Above) 1-month-old fry go to

the nursery aquaponics system

(Left) The range of sizes

achieved with the same age
fingerlings; this is why you sort
and size-segregate. These also
go the aquaponics system, but
into different tanks!
Egg Harvesting Process
(Lefr) What’s left in the hapa
bag after carefully skimming the
fry off the top are the eggs.
Some larger fry are seen to the
right, these will be hand-sorted
out.

(Right) A mix of smaller and

larger fry and eggs along with
the usual gungus that gets
concentrated when you
condense the hapa into a small
bag such as this.
 Egg Harvesting Process
Rose and Dad inspecting about
2,000 newly-harvested eggs. We
transferred them quickly to the
McDonald jar after this picture
was taken.

Here’s what these eggs will

turn into in about two and a
half years: a 7.4 pound tilapia!
 Egg Harvesting Process
To the left is a sac fry: a tiny tail
and head attached to a big
reservoir of nutrients that this
little fish will use to grow to
swimup fry size in the next few
days. To a mosquito fish or any
other small predator, it is a tasty
and delectable bite of protein
and fat.

To the right are gambusia

affinis: mosquito fish, and if
you get them into your
breeding tanks or egg
hatching system, you will lose
a LOT or ALL of your sac fry
and eggs.
Egg Harvesting Process
DON’T let any dragonfly larvae
get transferred into the
McDonald jar or the floating
frame that the smallest fry go
into: they’re voracious eaters
that will disappear all your baby
tilapia!

AND don’t get any of these

into the McDonald jar or
floating frame; they will also
disappear your babies!
Egg Hatching Process
(Left) The “equipment”
(courtesy of Randy
Campbell!). Simply a
floating frame, a
submersible pump, and
a McDonald jar!

(Right) High-tech method for

regulating water flow into
McDonald jar: cut a hole in
the water supply hose! (you
could put a valve there, too).
 Egg Hatching Process
(Left) McDonald jar with
water flowing, spilling
down the “spillway” into
the floating frame. The
submersible pump is at
the end of the tubing in
the water.

(Right) Eggs, sac fry, and swimup fry

in the bottom of the McDonald jar. We
removed the jar from the fry tank for
this photo, this is how it looks right
after you transfer eggs from the hapa
during harvest.
 Tilapia Nursery
• The different square tanks in
this nursery hold different-sized
“cohorts” of tilapia until they
are moved into grow-out tanks
in systems or sold.
• A hatchery/nursery is an
excellent source of additional
income. You need to hatch your
own fish anyway, why not just
make your hatchery and
nursery operation a little larger
and have extra to sell?

One of our fine young

cannibals; this is why the
tanks are separated and
filtered between each tank
 Tilapia Nursery
(Left) A floating frame insde the
greenwater tank with swimup
fry inside. They will be
transferred to a nursery tank in
an aquaponics system, or a
floating frame inside a nursery
tank after about 4 weeks when
they’re 3/4” to 1” long. You will
have almost 100% survival
then.

(Right) Swimup fry feeding on

commercial fish food inside a
floating frame in a greenwater
tank. They take 3-5 days to
learn to feed, after transfer;
the food they’re swimming in
sustains them until then.
 Tilapia Nursery
The separate fingerling tanks
in this nursery are integrated
in a single unit; but you can
achieve the same result by
plumbing a series of smaller
tanks together with a small
(1/2”) drop from one tank to
the next. Stock water troughs
are cheap and work well for
this use.

A floating frame inside an

aquaponics system nursery tank;
this allows you to have more
than one size of fish in a single
tank, saving on tank cost, and
making it MUCH easier to
transfer or harvest fish.
Tilapia Breeding Quirks
 Don’t crowd the fish! Tilapia feed and grow much better with 40
+/- fish in a 12’ diameter, 3,000-gallon tank.
 They like deep water (3’ minimum depth) and get nervous in
water shallower than 2 feet, OR when the tank water is clear.
They also won’t breed in water colder than 72 degrees F.
 Tilapia are explorers; you need to manage their explorations by
keeping the water height at least 6” below the top of the tank.
 If you have herons nearby you need to cover your tanks with
covers or shade covers that prevent their access to your tilapia
fry (especially hatchery tanks with smaller fish!).
 DON’T EVER let mosquito fish into your hatchery tanks! They
will eat all the tilapia fry and eggs! Getting the tanks sterilized
is a big job.
 We need to exchange the tank water twice a year as it simply
becomes anaerobic and stinky at the bottom, then kills your 30 fish
Friendly Aquaponics, Inc
 First fish into system November 2007, six
aquaponics systems, a commercial tilapia
nursery; Health Department certified
vegetable processing facility completed in
September, 2008
 USDA Organic Certification August 2008
 Food Safety Certification May 2009
 Currently yields 3,000 lbs vegetables and 250
lbs fish per month.
 Www:friendlyaquaponics.com
 Email:[email protected]
 Phone: 808-775-7745 Susanne or Tim
All photos and text copyright 2008-2014 Friendly Aquapoonics, Inc, Susanne Friend, and Tim Mann