Should I introduce tilapia fingerling directly to my system?

musamaniac

Hi all, I recently ordered 50 orange Mozambique tilapia fingerlings for my backyard system. They were only available ungraded, and I am expecting them to come in sizes ranging from 1/2" to 1". This is my first time ordering fingerlings, and I have only ever worked with fish >2" in size.

My system already has 24 feeder goldfish in it. I lost a couple of the ones I initially picked up to a common fungal disease present in pretty much every system I have worked on, but the rest appear to be healthy. I plan to move them all from the 150gal fish tank to the sump tank and halt the feeding of the goldfish for a couple days to improve water quality prior to the arrival of the tilapia fingerlings.

My question is - can introducing fingerlings of this size directly to the system stress them out too much and lead to a high mortality rate? I am running three airstones in the fish tank. My concerns have to do with the stress of the transfer and potential exposure to fish diseases that may still be latent in the system. Is this also generally bad practice? I am only running a single home system that I may never have to restock with new fingerlings, so I otherwise do not require a small tank for fingerlings or anything of the like.

If there is a disease risk, would it benefit me to run a UV sterilizer until the fingerlings are established in the system? Is there anything else I can do to increase survival rates?

Here are my water readings:

pH -- 8.0
NH3/NH4+ -- 0 ppm (trace amounts <0.1 ppm may be present because I am overfeeding slightly at the moment on purpose to push nitrates up)
NO2- -- 0 ppm
NO3- -- 15 ppm
TDS -- 167 ppm
Temperature - Highs of 83 deg F / 28.3 deg C during the day and lows of 76 deg F / 24.4 deg C at night

I also have not dosed for three weeks as of this Friday.

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