Check Here How to Make Tilapia Lay Eggs Faster!

Tilapia fish eggs are a profitable business alternative besides the tilapia itself for Tilapia Fish Farmers. Therefore, it is important to know how to make tilapia spawn quickly. It could be due to the provision of quality feed, or keeping the tilapia spawning grounds.

Commodities of fresh water fish that have economic value apart from carp, catfish and carp, tilapia is the right choice for cultivators. Until now, the demand for tilapia is still high from various parties, from traders in traditional markets to requests for household consumption.

However, who would have thought that from the seeds you could already sell and make a profit. Usually, cultivators who are new to the aquaculture business use tilapia fish seeds to start the cultivation process, so there is a potential market that is quite profitable. Here are tips and ways for fast tilapia to lay eggs.

Tilapia Breeders

The first step in how to find tilapia spawn is by knowing when the tilapia spawn season is. Ideally the breeding season for fish is when it enters the end of winter in June-September, or in spring in September-December.

Next, you need to ascertain whether the prospective tilapia broodstock belongs to the category of pure line fish and has special DNA with superior characteristics. To produce the best tilapia eggs, prospective tilapia brooders with special genetics are needed. 

The characteristics of quality tilapia include:

1. Responsive when given food
2. Resistant to pests
3. Has neatly arranged scales
4. Have a healthy physical condition and no defects in body shape.

Meanwhile, specifically the characteristics of prospective male sires who are ready to mate, include the following:

1. Almost the whole body is black.
2. The dorsal fin is bright or reddish in color.
3. If the stomach is stripped, it will secrete fluid.
4. Has 2 holes in the genitalia, namely the anal hole and the sperm hole as well as the urine hole.

While the criteria for prospective female tilapia broodstock are as follows:

1. Has a paler body color than male sires.
2. There is a circular line on the dorsal and tail fins.
3. The tips of the fins are pale reddish.
4. The nose and hind jaw are bright yellow.
5. If the stomach is striped, it will not secrete liquid.
6. Has 3 holes in the urogenital tool, namely the anal hole, urine hole and genital papilla hole where the egg comes out.

After the spawning process is complete, you need to know the characteristics of tilapia laying eggs to find out whether the broodstock will or are currently saving eggs. If you see the female parent often swimming in the corner of the pond, and looks like she is isolating herself, then the fish are ready to spawn. 

The way to get the best tilapia broodstock candidates can be through the Freshwater Aquaculture Fisheries Center (BBPBAT), local fishery centers, or platforms on line trusted fish seller

Tilapia fish are ready to spawn when the fish enter the gonadal maturity period between 5-6 months with a female brood weight of 200-250 grams and a male brood weight of 250-300 grams. It should be noted that tilapia has a productive period of 1.5-2 years, if the prospective broodstock has entered a productive period of more than 2 years, replace the broodstock with a new one immediately.

In one spawning, tilapia can produce as many as 300-1500 eggs, depending on the size of the female broodstock. The color of tilapia eggs is yellowish which has a diameter of 2.8 mm.

Tips for Fast Tilapia Laying Eggs

After knowing how to choose the right tilapia broodstock and how to find out how tilapia lay eggs, the next step is to make tilapia spawn quickly. There are several factors that you need to pay attention to so that tilapia broodstock can lay eggs quickly.

1. Preparing a Special Pool

In contrast to fish-rearing ponds, when prospective male and female brooders have entered the tilapia spawning season, it is best to immediately prepare several ponds or special cultivation media. The first pond needed is a brood pond. Separate between the male and female brood pools. Then, when entering the breeding season, place the two parents in the spawning pond.

Wait until the tilapia have successfully laid eggs, then immediately separate the tilapia eggs into the nursery pond so that the male brooders do not eat the tilapia eggs. When the tilapia seeds already have a certain weight or size, then put the fish in the rearing pond.

The thing to consider when building these ponds is their location. Tilapia get stressed easily, especially if there are different or dangerous activities outside the pond. You need to be careful when you are going to feed fish or monitor the condition of the fish, because if there is even a little different activity, the tilapia can detect it as a danger. Therefore, choose a location for tilapia cultivation ponds that are far from villages or residential areas.

2. Clean the Pool Routinely

Dirty pond conditions have the potential to increase fish stress levels. It is recommended that you routinely clean the tilapia pond at least once a day to clean ammonia, both from leftover feed and from tilapia excrement.

Use running water when cleaning the pool so that the dirt also flows out of the pool. Then, also pay attention to whether there are pests in the cultivation pond. For example, plant root pests, or even germs and bacteria. To clean germs and bacteria, you can use UV light to remove them.

3. Feed Tilapia to Lay Eggs Quickly

The most crucial way for tilapia to lay eggs is the selection of feed for tilapia brooders. Feed for tilapia parents and adult tilapia consumption is different, although both require high protein feed for growth and development.

Choose special foods that contain high protein, followed by fat and fiber. Tilapia brooders require high protein feed to help their growth so that it is more optimal to lay eggs. Natural fish feed has greater potential to help the growth of tilapia broodstock because natural food is the same as tilapia feed in their habitat. Some of the natural food in question include moss, phytoplankton, or azolla.

However, you can provide artificial feed that contains high protein, some of which are tofu dregs, shrimp waste, corn, fish meal, vegetable scraps, fish oil and fish meal. Of all the artificial feeds, fish meal is the artificial feed that contains the highest protein, while shrimp meal contains the highest fiber.

However, it is best not to mix feed for prospective sires who will do spawning. This is because self-prepared feed has the potential to be wrong in terms of nutritional needs so that it can increase stress on tilapia.

Apart from that, complement the nutritional needs of tilapia with special supplements or multivitamins, for example green algae which contain high protein and complex vitamins.

4. Maintain Health and Prevent Pests in Tilapia

To produce tilapia eggs of the highest quality, prospective broodstock must meet all the criteria, including the criteria in which the health of the broodstock must be guaranteed. If you find symptoms of sick tilapia, then immediately separate the prospective broodstock into the isolation pond and care for it until it recovers. If you continue to use sick broodstock, pests and bacteria can infect other broodstock and their egg candidates, so the hatched tilapia are not of good quality.

You also need to find out the types of pests and bacteria that can attack tilapia and how to deal with them. To help maintain the health of prospective sires, also provide special multivitamins to increase body immunity to avoid pests and diseases. In addition to the solutions already mentioned, you can help maintain the health condition of prospective broodstock by routinely controlling and cleaning fish ponds.