Quote:
Originally Posted by Radar Chief
Tilapia is a shit fish.
Literally, they eat shit.
Mrs. Radar and I took our son to the St. Louis zoo a couple of summers ago and you'll never guess what they kept in the hippo enclosure to help keep it clean. Yup, tilapia.
I was fortunate enough that while I was checking out the hippo enclosure one swam by and left behind a couple of hippo nuggets in its wake, and before those nuggets even started settling to the bottom several tilapia swarmed and started pecking at them.
I'll never purposely eat tilapia again.
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I presume that said fish aren't provided to the public for consumption!
Anyway:
Myth: Tilapia eat poop.
Fact: Tilapia are plant eaters; they do not eat poop unless they are being starved.
Truth: The rumor that tilapia prefer poop stems from an episode of Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel in which the host, Mike Rowe, visited a fish farm that raised hybrid striped bass. Mike unknowingly exposed the cruelty of the farmers, as they starved their tilapia into eating the wastes of the more valuable bass. Some time later, after a public outcry, the farm reported that the tilapia were only being used as "cleaners" and were never intended for human consumption. Still not nice, but whatever.
Other investigations into the tilapia farming practices in Honduras, Vietnam, Indonesia and China, have reported that it is not uncommon for fish farmers to starve tilapia into eating hog manure. Surprisingly, this practice does not have to be disclosed when the tilapia filets are imported for sale in US grocery stores. This is actually true of all imported fish. To be safe, you should only eat fish raised in the United States.
By the way, we use the word "starve" loosely to mean "not supplying any legitimate aquatic species food source". Tilapia have very strong strike and graze instincts, and will "nibble" on just about anything that enters their water, including fingers and toes.