Reply #17: The Davao-based Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center Foundation gives these tips on growing tilapia. [View All]

Raising Tilapia in Your Backyard

The Davao-based Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center Foundation gives these timely and relevant tips on growing tilapia.

Tilapia is now widely distributed around the world. It has become the mainstay of many small-scale aquaculture projects of poor fish farmers in the developing world. According to Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero III, the executive director of the Laguna-based Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development (PCAMRD), tilapia is now cultured in more than 70 countries.

Fishery experts have dubbed tilapia as “aquatic chicken” because it possesses many positive attributes that suit the fish for a varied range of aquaculture systems. For one, tilapia tolerates a wide range of environmental conditions and is highly resistant to diseases and parasitic infections.

Other good traits of tilapia include excellent growth rates on a low-protein diet, ready breeding in captivity and ease of handling; and, more importantly, wide acceptance as food fish.

Next to milkfish (more popularly known as “bangus”), tilapias are among the widely cultured species in the Philippines. The culture of tilapia in freshwater ponds and cages has been a commercial success:

Currently, there are an estimated 15,000 hectares of freshwater ponds and 500 hectares of cages in lakes in lakes and reservoirs producing over 50,000 metric tons of tilapia.

Tilapia was first introduced into the country in the 1950s Today, there are four species raised in the country: Oreochronlis niloticus, O. mossambicus, O. aureus, and Tilapia zillii.

<SNIP>http://www.agribusinessweek.com/raising-tilapia-in-your-backyard/