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In recent years, many new types of fish and seafood have appeared on our tables, some
of them have remained exotic, while others may become our daily food.
One such contender for the title of "daily bread" is Tilapia.
This is a fish with an ancient history and great potential for artificial cultivation.
Tilapia, or Tilapia, this is its second name, is a genus of freshwater fish of the cichlid
family.
The genus includes more than a hundred species distributed in the tropics.
It is believed that the genus tilapia comes from Asia Minor, but over time and with the
help of people it spread widely throughout Africa and most of Asia, organically entered
the local freshwater fauna there.
It includes many species, subspecies, local variations and natural hybrids, often very
close, similar to each other and hardly different.
Tilapia are practically omnivores, they are characterized by unpretentiousness and high
endurance to sharp fluctuations in living conditions.
Gastronomically, tilapia has become very popular due to the delicate taste of its high protein,
low fat white meat.
Tilapia is very unpretentious to the conditions of detention, temperature and water quality.
Almost all types of tilapia can live, develop normally and breed in fresh, brackish and
even sea water, which is a very rare property for fish.
Although most tilapias are tropical fish, some species can survive in a very wide temperature
range from 10 to 45° Celsius.
Today, tilapia is cultivated very widely, it can be found in artificial reservoirs in
almost all countries of Africa, Southeast and Central Asia, as well as in most countries
of Latin America, the USA and even in some European countries.
Large quantities of tilapia are also grown in China, from where it is exported in industrial
quantities.
Tilapia is a fairly strong competitor for other fish, and after falling into a reservoir,
it always displaces its neighbors.
For this reason, fish are not allowed in protected waters with other rare fish and are considered
undesirable in nature reserves.
Pond cultivation of tilapia is the most popular method in fish farming.
One of its advantages is that the fish make efficient use of natural food.
The technology of pond cultivation is predominant in the countries of the tropical zone, where
climatic conditions allow reproduction and cultivation of tilapia throughout the year
on a natural food base.
One of the main problems that arise when growing tilapia in ponds and other water bodies is
the rapid overpopulation associated with a high reproductive capacity (multiple spawning
during the year).
A reservoir for breeding and raising fish must meet certain requirements.
Its main goal is to create comfortable conditions for keeping fish.
The depth of the pond must be at least 150 cm.
Its bottom must be free of peat or silt.
Vegetation must be present in the reservoir, but within reasonable limits.
It should be borne in mind that small ponds will require serious maintenance, and large
ones can be very expensive to maintain.
Based on this, it follows that the optimal dimensions are within 30 - 50 square meters.
meters.
It is desirable that one of the sections of the pond be in the shade.
In addition, it is worth knowing that in order for the pond not to be flooded during spring
floods, it should not be located in low areas.
The bottom relief is made complex, with alternating shallow water with deep water areas, with
rapids and ledges of various sizes.
A good option for a pond is a waterproofing device.
The simplest and most inexpensive material is polyethylene film laid on a sand cushion
and geotextile.
The most reliable equipment option is concreting the pond bowl and coating it with sprayed
waterproofing materials.
Before filling the reservoir with water, it is limed.
This will neutralize the acidity of the soil, which is harmful to most aquatic plants, and
will also accelerate the process of mineralization of organic substances and the release of carbon
dioxide from the soil.
All this will create favorable conditions for the vital activity of microorganisms and,
as a result, improve the ecological conditions for growing fish.
When spawning tilapia in a pond, there are 5–7 females per male.
The male chooses a female ready for spawning and drives the rest away.
Spawning lasts from 5 to 15 minutes.
The female lays eggs, which are immediately inseminated by the male.
The female takes the fertilized eggs into her mouth.
There caviar is quite a long time (up to a month).
Thus, she “hatches” eggs and fry in her mouth, and then she releases them for feeding
and, thus, gradually accustoms them to an independent lifestyle.
Tilapia offspring can be obtained both by natural spawning in trays or pools, and by
the factory method.
Artificial insemination of eggs in tilapia is not used, and the factory method of reproduction
is that fertilized eggs or embryos are taken from the spawning females from the oral cavity
and incubated in special devices.
Embryos selected from females are placed in incubators with a capacity of 1 l (such as
Weiss apparatus), the larvae emerge, and when they switch to external nutrition, they are
transferred to trays with a capacity of 80 l.
At the age of two or three days after hatching, the larvae become mobile, and on the third
or fourth day they float to the surface and switch to active feeding.
An indispensable condition of the regime, keeping the larvae in stagnant water.
As soon as the fry reach a certain size, they are transferred to the main pond.
To do this, they are placed in plastic bags, where oxygen is supplied.
These bags are delivered to the pond where the fry will be released to swim freely.
The diet of the larvae is varied.
A good result is obtained by feeding with chlorella, and with the resorption of the
yolk sac - with small forms of zooplankton.
As practice shows, the survival rate of a one and a half gram fry is above 98%.
Subject to the cultivation technology, such a fry gains a marketable mass of 500 g in
six months.
In fact, therapy is a broiler chicken in fish farming.
Asian countries are the largest source of therapy supplies.
About 150 thousand tons of this fish are exported from this region within six months.
The top five producers in the region are China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia.
One of the main problems that arise when raising calves in ponds and other water bodies is
the rapid overpopulation associated with a high reproductive capacity, the fish spawn
many times during the year.
In some cases, this leads to overpopulation of water bodies, a decrease in productivity,
and is one of the most difficult problems in its cultivation.
In such ponds, they both eat and excrete their waste, with very little room for them to swim.
They eat and shit all in the same little space!
All this gives rise to numerous myths that omnivorous fish can be dangerous to health.
Although numerous studies have not identified antibiotics and parasites in fish that are
dangerous to human health.
To avoid disease, water quality must be a very high priority.
You will have to spend a lot of money on the initial installation for water filtration
and purification, and then expect constant maintenance costs.
Maintaining aquaculture is not cheap.
To avoid overcrowding in the pond, it is best to grow the therapy in conjunction with predatory
fish such as eel, largemouth bass and catfish.
For more effective breeding therapy and profit, feeders are needed in the pond.
Fish get used to new adaptations easily - sometimes 5-6 minutes are enough, but in some cases
you have to wait up to several days.
To speed up this process, farmers first sprinkle feed under the feeder.
Pond fish feeding devices are used when the bottom of the lake is too silty or there is
no place for feeding that meets the requirements of breeding.
The optimal area for feeding fish in a reservoir is a coastal zone with a depth of 60 to 80
cm.
But it is best to do this in inclined places on the coast, where the depth varies from
30 to 100 cm, due to which the water is self-purified from excrement and food.
This is due to the constant circulation of the fluid.
Commodity consider therapy weighing 250 g and above.
Under favorable conditions, the fish reaches it in about 6 months.
In each particular farm, the timing of the catch of therapy, suitable in this case, is
determined, taking into account climatic features.
In small ponds, fish are caught with a net.
Special pumps are used to speed up the dispatch of the caught fish.
In order to successfully carry out the operation of transporting fish, you need to properly
prepare the fish, that is, place it in clean running water for 2-4 hours, where dirt is
removed from it, the gills are washed, and the intestines are emptied of food debris.
The volume of water that is required to transport fish is determined depending on the distance,
air temperature and the presence of oxygen in it.
To fill transport containers, only pure water must be used, in which there are no harmful
and toxic impurities, and the temperature must be the same as in the fish's native pond.
For calves, the optimum temperature is 20-23 ° C. The density of placement of fish in
containers is different and depends on the duration of the journey, air and water temperature,
age and size of the fish and some other factors.
Water is not required for transporting live fish.
Success here depends on the duration of the trip, as a rule, the limit is 2-4 hours.
Moreover, the duration is longer, the lower the temperature in the container.
Refrigerators work well for this.
In this case, transportation is carried out in trays or boxes, where the fish is placed
in 1-2 layers.
In addition to ponds, fish are grown in cages, which are located in lakes, bays, dams, as
well as in rivers and canals.
Cages have a number of advantages over ponds.
They make it easier to control the fish, allow for higher stocking densities, and reduce
losses due to predators.
To prevent overcrowding in cages, it is recommended to keep individuals of the same sex in the
reservoir, which excludes the possibility of reproduction.
Since males in most species grow much faster than females, growing only one male can significantly
increase the yield.
However, sorting and selection of same-sex individuals is very laborious.
Although males are much larger than females.
They have large jaws and a massive head, their fins are larger, pointed and elongated.
The coloration of males is brighter.
They differ in the nature of behavior, being more aggressive.
Raising only therapy males is economically beneficial.
This can be achieved in various ways.
For example, by crossing Nile females with Mozambican or Aurea males, 80 to 90% of the
offspring are only male tilapia.
The second way - in the first three weeks, fry should be fed with testosterone or methyltestosterone.
These male sex hormones will also affect the fish species.
If there is no desire to engage in either crossing or similar feeding, then you can
trust nature itself.
With this option, it is still better to keep females and males separately, in different
water bodies.
Despite the pronounced tropical origin of tilapia, there are certain prospects for its
cultivation in our latitudes.
Even in Soviet times, research was carried out on breeding fish in natural and artificial
"warm" reservoirs of our country.
In 2013, the only tilapia plant in Russia was launched in the Sladkovsky district of
the Tyumen region, which operates in a recirculating water supply system.
The production capacity of the closed cycle plant is designed for 300 tons of
tilapia per year, but last year about 900 tons of fish were caught.
An integrated system of modern industrial fish production has been established in the
Sladkovsky district.
From the improvement of reservoirs and breeding of planting material to the deep processing
of products.
Due to balanced feed, maintaining a certain temperature and oxygen supply, juveniles quickly
gain weight.
Six months later, a half-kilogram tilapia is sent for processing.
A powerful refrigeration plant for 450 tons of fish made it possible to ensure constant
loading of processing capacities.
Shock freezing to minus forty degrees ensures the safety of the product, preserving its
taste and nutritional properties.
At fish processing plants, telapia is effectively subjected to
deep processing, which includes processes that contribute to changing the structure
of the product and its taste.
Consumers are offered products such as whole frozen fish, frozen fillets, fresh fillets
and value-added products, such as fish stuffed with shrimp and lobster meat, breaded or pickled
fish, etc.
In addition to the main products, fish produce by-products,
such as the production of fishmeal, fish oil or biofuel.
When processing fish on an industrial scale, a large amount of fish waste often accumulates,
which cannot be thrown into general landfills, as the risk of contamination of groundwater,
soil and people with pathogens increases.
Telapia should be bought only in reliable and trusted stores, since it is very difficult
to determine the quality of the product by eye.
If chilled fish is purchased, then it should be consumed within 1-3 days after purchase,
and stored no higher than zero degrees Celsius.
Re-freezing tilapia
should
be avoided, as this can cause harmful bacteria to develop in the meat.
That's all.
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