northern studfish, channel cat, black bullhead, and blacktail shiner

My newest editions. Only had them a couple of days. Baby channel cat and black bullhead. Growing them out for my 220g. The bulhead ate pellets and flake the first day home. The channel cat only eats flake so far, didn't like the pellets. Not quite 3" long.



One of my three little studfish. Not sure if male or female, they're still small. I'm gonna try to catch some pretty males now that I know where to find them. I caught a big one that day, but just my luck he was in the poccess of dying


And one of my school of blacktail shiners. The big dominant male has beautiful vivid color, but he wouldn't stop moving to get a pic. I just got lucky to get a pic of this one. Every time I come over they think they're getting food and freak out. The little bumps on his head are tubercles.


And a vid that shows WHY they're so hard to get a pic of. With some topminnows and notropis sp. in the frame also.

http://s207.photobucket.com/albums/bb142/anostomusternetzi/?action=view&current=033112004341.mp4

Hmmm, posting kind of distorted the pics. Click on the top to view original, they look better.

Oh yeah, I also got this beetle. He's about an inch long. Eats flake food. Any ideas on species?

I figured it was Dystiscus, just not which species. Thanks.

I know they can be predatory; not too worried bout the fish. Nothing rare in there really. Nature is nature *shrug*.
Thus far he's not bothering anything. Just eating fish food.

But I do plan to set up a tank specifically for them. My husband said there's a bunch of them where he got that one, he just didn't know I wanted them. I saw a tank full of several species at the zoo the other day and decided I needed some if they were that easy to keep. They were feeding them crickets.

He also caught a giant water bug, which terrified him and his friend. He wouldn't let me keep it in the house, so it went in the pond lol.

Holy crap that beetle eats fast. And A LOT. I didn't know it was possible. He swims around at the top upsidedown grabbing flake food. He gets a big clump of it with his front legs, and then floats there and eats it all within a coupe of seconds.

I'll try to get some video later.

Completely ignores the fish for now. Guessing he doesn't put any effort into hunting since there's easy food floating around.

Hmmm. Now that I've gotten to do some research, I'm thinking it's NOT a Dysticus. The genus in general isn't well represented in this region, and the one you mentioned definitely isn't found hear, nor is the similarly named marginicollis. The only one that seemed to be possible in this region was carolinus, and it's definitely not one of those.

The most likely candidate for my area is another type of predacious water beetle in the same subfamily, the fringed diving beetle (Cybister fimbriolatus). But it definitely appears to be a Cybister sp..

Look at the pic here: http://bugguide.net/node/view/14669
Seems to be a match.

One thing that made me reconsider is the wideness and shape of the body. And the the head and where it meets the body looked off compared to every Dysticus I looked at.

Really hard to find good information on most of this family. Not studied to a large extent I guess, at least not the U.S. species. Odd for something so prevalent.

Got a video of him eating:

http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/f...-my-water-beetle-eating&p=6025383#post6025383