Creek Chub Community Gone Horribly Wrong!

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crappiekeeper

Gambusia
MFK Member
Jun 19, 2012
873
1
16
The land of the pine
So i went to the creek today and caught about 15 creek chubs 1-3 inches. i put them in with my redfin pickerel in my 60 gallon and the slaughtering begun... the first pic is what is left of the main school, and the second is of my fat pickerel. There is about 8-11 left. Oh, and does anyone know if my pickerel will work with a 3-5 inch redbreast sunfish? i caught a bunch today but i didnt know so i threw them back.downsized_0828121935.jpg 0828121937.jpg:nilly::nilly::nilly::confused::confused::ROFL:

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Chub aren't good tankmates for pickerel under some circumstances. Smaller chub get swallowed but larger chub are very competitive eaters, extremely active and can be slightly territorial and might stress/out compete the pickerel. An adult creek chub @10-12" has no problems swallowing a standard large feeder goldfish or a whole zipperback shrimp, so most prey items you'd give to the pickerel the chub can eat as well. Given a large enough tank and/or just a few chub it could work out or if you train your pickerel to feed from your hands it might work ok as well. Stuffing large chub on pellets before adding the pickerel's food might work as well.

Sunfish might be a better option if you're careful of aggression, how big is your pickerel?
 
The sunfish should be ok. But the creek chubs will all be food unless you keep the pickerel extremely well fed on smaller feeders. I have kept chubs and pickerel together successfully but once the pickerel went with out feeders a day or two the chubs became food.
 
The sunfish should be ok. But the creek chubs will all be food unless you keep the pickerel extremely well fed on smaller feeders. I have kept chubs and pickerel together successfully but once the pickerel went with out feeders a day or two the chubs became food.
yeah, i was really just hoping to raise them to about 6 or 7 inches to put in my pond as forage for my Bass
 
Had a 10" creek chub swallowed a 7" northern pike fingerling.
 
I've kept hornyheads and creek chubs in the past and I can't keep any small fish in them once they got to 8"+. They always stressed out the northern pike juveniles and eat everything that I tried to feed to the pikes. They do makes a nice mix with sunfish and perch through.
 
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