Commercial tilapia farms use drum filters and pass-through water flows from rivers to keep their fish safe for human consumption. Feces are removed from the water continuously. This keeps their fish clean and free from bacterial infections and subsequent disease. This is why restaurant and grocery store tilapia tastes so good.
Home tilapia farmers usually let their fish swim in their own decaying feces. The feces are held inside ill-conceived filtration systems shared on the Internet. As the water recirculates, the feces continue to dissolve and the longer that the feces are allowed to dissolve, the more disease-causing bacteria grows. This is why the fish from home tilapia farmers usually tastes disgusting.
It is a biological fact that freshwater fish like tilapia absorb water through their skin. Saltwater fish do not. Allowing tilapia to steep in their own feces for seven months will affect their flavor and can render them inedible. No amount of harvest time purging will clean up the flavor of tilapia saturated with the flavor of their own feces.
The Internet is full of poorly designed DIY filtration methods that are good at hiding tilapia feces from view, but this out-of-sight, out-of-mind thinking is only creating bigger problems. All of these filter methods are trap and hide feces while the constant water flow breaks them down into microscopic particles, feeding bacteria and causing disease.
Home tilapia farmers must remove feces from their water every single day if they intend to eat their fish, let alone serve it to someone else. In fact, all enclosed animal farming involves constant or daily feces removal. It's a perfectly normal part of the farming process.
