Be Ready! Most live tilapia orders ship within 1 to 5 business days.
Tilapia fingerlings and tilapia breeding colonies
Understand what you are buying!
We strongly recommend that you read our sections on Fingerling Grading and Tilapia Fingerlings to help you fully understand your choices.
Tilapia fingerlings are not created equally! Thirty days after they are hatched, our fingerlings are evaluated and graded according to their individual rates of growth. When you buy tilapia fingerlings from Lakeway Tilapia, you can choose from three different grades to suit your needs. We are the only hatchery that offers graded tilapia fingerlings.
Why buy from Lakeway Tilapia?
Free replacement for 30 days is available! Even if you kill them on purpose!*
We only offer tilapia that have been raised in our own hatcheries.
We do not source our tilapia from the Great Lakes or Florida.
Lifetime expert technical support with all tilapia purchases.
Guaranteed live arrival without impossible requirements.
Our tilapia are certified as disease-free.
We’ve got the lowest prices by far.
Value priced tilapia fingerlings
Shopping around for the lowest price? We have tilapia for only 89¢ each. Keep scrolling down to discover our value priced tilapia.
A commitment to tilapia purity
Our tilapia fingerlings are raised indoors, away from disease-carrying insects, birds and rodents. The plastics used in our hatchery are food-grade and BPA free. We keep our breeding colonies and fingerlings in glass enclosures and employ the use of ultraviolet sterilizers and ozone to keep their environment sanitary. Our water is sourced from our own deep wells and is tested for purity before being introduced to our tilapia. We do not use hormones or give genetically modified food to our fingerlings. We feed a diet that includes organic Spirulina and high quality aquatic plants. And of course, all of our tilapia are inspected to be disease-free.
Certified disease-free
Speaking of disease-free, we back it up with more than just words. Our tilapia are inspected for eleven common and not-so-common viruses, bacterias and parasites. They are the only tilapia available on the Internet that have passed this rigorous battery of tests and we post the results right on our website.
No hormones
Think that hormone use is rare? Think again. The state of New Mexico actually requires that all fish be treated with testosterone! Under the FDA, tilapia producers are not required to disclose such hormone usage. However, it is a federal crime to ship fish intended for human consumption after making false statements about hormones, so the companies that use them just don’t talk about it. Lakeway Tilapia does not use hormones of any kind at any time. Our tilapia are 100% natural.
No imported or re-sold tilapia fingerlings
You would be shocked at how many of the websites offering tilapia fingerlings don’t actually hatch any of the fish that they sell. Top ranking websites that self-proclaim themselves as “tilapia stations” with multitudes of species are actually just re-selling tilapia acquired elsewhere, even buying and re-selling our lowest cost value tilapia for a premium price. Aquaponics dealers sell tilapia that they don’t have, then pay other website owners to drop-ship on their behalf. This activity is how diseases are spread and makes it nearly impossible to determine the point of origin whenever questions arise.
In November of 2018 the US Government stepped in under the Lacey act to aid state officials who were fed up with the importation of potentially diseased tilapia. The Lacey Act is a 126 year old piece of legislation that regulates the trade of wildlife, fish and plants. Deadly diseases such as Viral hemorrhagic septicemia, found primarily in the Great Lakes region as well as toxic algae and deadly bacteria stirred up by hurricanes cutting through Florida’s swamps are hard to ignore. The reason why Lakeway Tilapia is licensed in or able to ship to places like Illinois, California, Hawaii and Alaska is due in no small part to the traceability of our tilapia back to our own sanitary hatcheries.
Florida tilapia fact: The situation is so bad in Florida that the state actually prohibits the transportation of tilapia that originate inside of Florida to be moved across their own county lines.
No stunted fingerlings
Under perfect conditions, tilapia fingerlings begin life growing at a maximum rate of 20% of their body weight every 24 hours. Over the first 42 days of their life that explosive growth will decrease down to about 4%. This steep drop in daily growth eventually flattens out and by day 75 they are growing at around 3% per day. On about the 98th day, their growth rate levels off at about 1.5% per day where it remains for another 142 days. This completes the 240 day period of accelerated growth, after which the daily size increase drops to a point that can only be measured in months.
It is important to understand that these growth rates are on a “genetic timer” coded into the DNA of every tilapia and have nothing to do with the current size of the tilapia. A three month old fingerling is going to grow at a maximum rate of 1.5% per day even if it is still only an inch long due to stunting, instead of the six inches that are possible. This is why the first 42 days in the life of a tilapia fingerling are so important. Any stunting that occurs during this time will cascade throughout its entire life and cannot be recovered.
On the farm, stunting can be caused by poor conditions, usually water temperatures outside the 80-88℉ range common in green houses. However cramped conditions, lack of proper nutrition, chemical damage from city water supplies, improper use of acids to adjust pH and low dissolved oxygen content can all stunt tilapia fingerlings.
On a retail level, the most common cause of stunting is over crowding due to slow moving inventory. A cubic foot of water can only hold 32 ounces of biomass before stunting occurs. When you consider the incredible growth rate of tilapia during their first 42 days of life, a typical 20 gallon tank goes from being able to hold over a thousand fry to no more than a hundred fingerlings very quickly.
Our high sales volume ensures that our inventory moves quickly and that our tanks are never over-crowded. Every tilapia that leaves our hatchery has been raised under perfect conditions and is growing at its own maximum genetic rate.
No fingerling word games
As you look around the Internet, check out the sizes of the fish being sold as “tilapia fingerlings” and you’ll see a lot of ⅜ and ½ fractions being used. Some sites even add a bit of eye-candy by giving a size range of ⅜ to 1 inch or ½ to 1½ inches and one site even reads “up to” 3 inches long, but the “up to” part includes every other size down to ¼ of an inch according to the fine print. These same sites claim that a foot long tilapia weighs six pounds (actually about one pound). It’s all nonsense written by people who have never actually farmed tilapia or raised one to maturity.
Remember, the size of tilapia fingerlings does not tell you anything about it. A stunted fish at three months old can be the same size as a properly raised fish at one month old.
The only accurate way to judge tilapia fingerlings is by weight at an exact age. After 40 days of growth any tilapia that weighs one gram or more has graduated to fingerling status. The same goes for tilapia that weigh 750 milligrams within the first 30 days of life. Fish at this stage have working fins (they can swim backwards), true scales, developed guts and they have reproductive organs. Everything else is a tilapia fry. So how long is a 750 milligram or a one gram fingerling? Well, from their top lip to the tip of their tail the average in our hatchery is from ⅞ to 1⅛ depending on where in the 30 to 40 day grading range that they are at the time.
Pure strain Blue tilapia for sale
From the River Jordan in the Middle East to the Lower Nile River in Africa, Blue tilapia have been fished and farmed for thousands of years. In South Africa, it is called a Blue Kurper, and in the north you might hear it referred to as an Israeli Tilapia. However, around the Sea of Galilee (Lake Tiberias), it is best known as St. Peter’s Fish, named after the Bible story of Apostle Peter, who was instructed by Jesus to look into the mouth of the first fish that he caught for a coin to pay the temple tax. We are very proud of the fact that we have obtained genetically pure lines of this culturally significant fish.
Blue tilapia is the only species that makes economic sense for fish farms in most of the United States. This is due to their fast growth and excellent cold water tolerance, down to 47º. Blue tilapia convert more food into weight and require less energy to keep warm, saving money for the tilapia farmer.
Scientific name: Oreochromis aureus
Water type: Fresh to slightly brackish
Normal adult temperatures: 60º F to 86º F
Maximum adult temperatures: 47º F to 106º F
Minimum fingerling temperature: 68º F
Minimum fry temperature: 80º F
Normal breeding temperature: 85º F
Optimal breeding pH level: 8.0
Feed: Algae discs, Purina Aquamax or duckweed.
Largest on record: 24″ at 9.6 pounds.
Blue tilapia advantages: Blue tilapia thrive in water temperatures that will kill any other species of tilapia. Blue tilapia have an internal salt content that makes them easy to purge prior to harvest and allows them to survive in slightly salty water. Blue tilapia is the species of choice that is served in restaurants and preferred by chefs due to its light clean flavor.
Pure strain Blue tilapia fingerlings
We offer three grades of Blue tilapia as well as un-graded. All graded tilapia are shipped when they are between 30 and 40 days after hatching for accurate grow-out results.
Food Grade Tilapia®
Our organically raised Blue food grade tilapia fingerlings are ready for grow-out. They are between 30 and 40 days old and average about one gram in weight. They will grow to over one pound and will be ready for harvesting in approximately seven months. As a result of the grading process, our food grade fingerlings are predominantly male. Food grade Blue fingerlings™ can also be used in aquaponics systems however their faster growth rate may result in greater fish waste which may require additional filtration depending on your system design.