Ok you fishing types, here is a question.
Is there such a fish as a Talapia?
I have been told that Talapia in the stores is made up of pieces and parts of various different fish.
Recently I saw a picture purported to be that of a man with a record Talapia, but it looked more like a Grouper to me.
Enlighten this old man who is counting the days..22 to be exact.
Jack you can go to the nearest canal system by your house and catch one. I call them Sh*t eaters and will never eat one, unless I had no other choice to survive. I think of them as mini carps.
Tilapia has been used as biological controls for certain aquatic plant problems. It has a preference for a floating aquatic plant,
duckweed (
Lemna sp.) but also consume some filamentous algae.
[13] In
Kenya tilapia were introduced to
control mosquitoes which were causing
malaria, because they consume
mosquito larvae, consequently reducing the numbers of adult female mosquitoes, the
vector of the disease (Petr 2000). These benefits are, however, frequently outweighed by the negative aspects of tilapia as an invasive species.
Tilapia are unable to survive in temperate climates because they require warm water. The pure strain of the blue tilapia,
Oreochromis aureus, has the greatest cold tolerance and dies at 45 °F (7 °C), while all other species of tilapia will die at a range of 52 to 62 °F (11 to 17 °C). As a result, they cannot invade temperate habitats and disrupt native ecologies in temperate zones; however, they have spread widely beyond their points of introduction in many fresh and brackish tropical and subtropical habitats, often disrupting native species significantly.
[14]Because of this, tilapia are on the
IUCN's 100 of the World's Worst Alien Invasive Species list.
[15] In the United States, tilapia are found in much of
Florida,
Texas, and a few other isolated areas like power plant discharge zones. Tilapia are also currently stocked in the
Phoenix, Arizona canal system as an algae growth control measure. Many state fish and wildlife agencies in the United States, Australia, South Africa, and elsewhere consider them to be
invasive species.
[16]
