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Tilapia farming at home, for food, for profit, for fun! ---------------(and all you need is a wet thumb!)
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Well, what do you do with a goldfish in a half gallon plastic bag in order to keep your  5 and 3 year old daughters from having a traumatic life and death experience? you keep the darn thing alive, that's what!
I can still picture it, an innocent county fair, a little girl covers her eyes with one hand, throws a ping-pong ball with the other, and oh brother!, we are the proud owners of a "feeder goldfish". (feeder, for the less seasoned aquafans out there, is a fish destined to end up being dinner for a big carnivorous fish). A trip to the toy store and we had the obligatory "Little Mermaid" one gallon aquarium.
 
Fast forward 5 years. I have one 45 gallon and one 125 gallon aquarium in my living room as well as a few smaller ones stored in the garage. The kids lost interest in fish ever since "the Lion King" came out. And I was NOT about to take them to the zoo, thank you very much! Who knows what I might have found myself dragging home!
Fast forward another 6 years. I look at the aquariums and say: there has got to be something I can grow in this aquariums that I can actually benefit from, as in edible fish. Hmmm, what to do?
Enter Mr. Sipe
 
Fate brought me to Mr. Sipe's doorstep, and from day one I knew I wanted to know everything he knows about tilapia. I've been his student since 2005.
 
Mr. Sipe is an Aquaculture consultant and has been in the tilapia production, hormone-free genetic improvement, and breeding business for over 30 years.
 
Through a selection process I like to call "descent with modification", (which I stole from Charles Darwin), that simply means selecting the best specimens out of thousands in a generation, he has been able to produce modified tilapia gene lines with special attributes, as in improved color (red/orange females which make it foolproof to distinguish them from males), Improved Body Form (the Hornorum male in a breeder colony will produce hybrids with more usable meat), and most importantly the ability to produce at least 98% male offspring from these breeders. (An all male population is highly desired because they grow faster and bigger).
The importance of this last attribute will become evident as you browse this website. (hint: NO HORMONES OF ANY KIND ARE USED HERE!
THE HYBRID FINGERLINGS ARE NATURALLY ALL MALE!)
It has to do with the genetic make up of the pure breeds!
The female pure breed Mossambica has "XX" sex-chromosomes and the male Hornorum has "ZZ" sex-chromosomes. The result of their breeding will be "XZ" chromosome hybrids which will be 98% male.

 

Unfortunately, with the advent of "sex reversal hormones", the commercial Tilapia farming industry found a way to have all male populations in a less costly (for them) manner. Of course they are not the ones eating the stuff.

Thus, Large scale Tilapia hybridization fell by the wayside.

It occurred to me that high quality hybrids were just what was needed for "niche" markets which demand the freshest all-natural product possible, and backyard aquaculturists who want to "grow their own".

Tilapia  breeder colonies are the key: from an aquarium in your living room to a small scale commercial facility, it is simply a matter of having the right number of colonies.

 

Tilapia Farming at Home was born.

 

Although now dedicated mostly to raising the pure breeds that make up the colonies that I sell, I currently have in my backyard a facility that I designed and built myself (with his advise of course), that is capable of producing about 2000 pounds of Tilapia per year. That is over 38 pounds of fish per week! Want to know how? Check out the "how you can do it" page.!

 

And now, the rest of the story:

 

As of March, 2008, Mr. Sipe and I have parted ways. I simply could not afford to drive to his property any more. Also his declining health made it very difficult for him to continue operating his farm or teaching me.

 

I now have male and female specimens of each gene line which allow me to breed my own breeder colonies. It is my belief that fate brought me to his doorstep for that very reason, so that I could learn from him what I could in order to carry on his quest  for a way to "feed the masses" onto the next generation. God bless him.