Talk:Tilapia as exotic species

message: I suggest we split this up into tilapia as an invasive species in general, and then each country would get its own section (warranting enough info on tilapiines of course...we don't want this to read like a list). Shrumster 04:34, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. This article is still in need of some work. I'd like to see plenty more references. That shouldn't be difficult, as this topic is quite widely studied, but it does need some help from someone familiar with the subject. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 10:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I'll see what I can do with it. Not sure if it counts as a WP:COI :), but I hate how tilapia (O. mossambicus, among others) have been released into every single major body of freshwater here in the Philippines. BTW, would it be good to merge this with the aquaculture article or something like that? Seems like the establishment of alien tilapia populations throughout the globe is inherrently linked to attempts to culture it? Shrumster 11:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I somewhat agree with the connection between aquaculture and conservation problems. However, in the US, tilapia were introduced for a variety of reasons including unwanted aquarium fishes and to control aquatic vegetation. They have also been introduced for sport fishing. In Australia, there is also a mix of reasons. But in Asia and Africa certainly, aquaculture has been the prime reason. Anyway, because the topic is complex, I'd suggest keeping Exotics and Aquaculture separate for now, and simply stress the connections where relevant. Cheers, Neale Neale Monks 11:16, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Subsections

message: I came very close to just deleting the bit about the teal, because I simply don't believe it.  I have a lot of experience with these fishes, and while they can certainly be invasive species, I do not believe they eat teal, even very young ones.  Especially any of the Oreochromis spp.  I did look for information about the Rennell Island Teal elsewhere on the web.  There were several references to the Rennell Island Teal being driven to extinction by tilapia eating their young, but none had any reference to a reliable source, and all had nearly the same wording - a clear example of misinformation spreading.  Most were wiki-type entries.  I could believe that tilapia competed with the young for food, or muddied the water so that the teal could not find food, or eliminated vegetation that the teal needed to survive, or any number of other ways they could drive teal to extinction, but not that they eat teal.  Tilapia are not large fish, and Oreochromis spp., with the minor exception of O. hornorum, hardly ever eat even small fish.  They are generally filter feeders, and they also eat invertebrates.  They are not agressive fishes that would go about eating ducks, even newly hatched ones.  I simply cannot believe this is true.  An extremely large Mossambique tilapia (O. mossambicus) would be about a kilogram (I have worked with these fish for years and never seen one that large, but they do, occasionally, apparently reach that size) and would not have a mouth big enough to engulf a duckling, and they do not have teeth to bite them apart, and they just don't have that kind of behavior anyway.  I could not find any other information on the extinct species except one website that listed it as an extinct species.  I am not an experienced wiki editor, so I am reluctant to overstep my bounds.  But it was extremely difficult to hold myself back from cutting something that seems so patently false to me.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Carptracker (talk • contribs) 03:31, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tilapia don't eat teal