Rating panfish aggresiveness
- Thread starter ksauers
- Start date
When we talk about the aggression of these sunfish, how serious is it? I'll have a 125 and I want green sunfish, pumpkinseeds, crappie, and pickerel. Does this aggression usually mean being territorial or does it mean these fish attempt to kill others? I know it can vary, but in most cases, what happens?
There really is no rule of what will be more aggressive like the above post, just generalizations based on personal experiences. Put together a sensible stock list and try raising them up together from juveniles and feel them out. I think in your case pumpkinseeds and greenies could work together, but I'm not sure how they'll work with a grass pickerel, which is the only pickerel that will fit in a 125. IMO a 125 is too small for crappie. In my experience crappie do much better in groups and they simply get too big for a 125.
4wheelvfr is correct, a 24" fish in an 18" tank is not a good thing, skip the crappie. and pickerel with sunnies tend to have their fins disappear(so I've read, multiple times from multiple people), so another no-no.
greens and pumpkinseeds are a good combo, and if you make lots of hides and sight blocks it should work out fairly well.
you want enough fish to overcrowd them some. I'd go with around 8-10 pumpkinseeds and 4-5 greens. I haven't managed to get any good shots of the pumpkinseeds I got from zimmerman's, but they're some good looking fish.
greens and pumpkinseeds are a good combo, and if you make lots of hides and sight blocks it should work out fairly well.
you want enough fish to overcrowd them some. I'd go with around 8-10 pumpkinseeds and 4-5 greens. I haven't managed to get any good shots of the pumpkinseeds I got from zimmerman's, but they're some good looking fish.
You will do better if you have a lot of them rather than a small group. It helps distribute the aggression.
this is not true in all cases.....Ive found that most Lepomis sp are very territorial during breeding season, they do well if there is structure, room to set territories, hardy fast dithers and a higher female to male ratio; back in the day when I tried overstocking a 38g with Green sunfish and madtoms from a creek it turned into a underwater highlander movie.
You can tell who's kept sunfish here lol. The most random fish I've ever encountered. You can never tell how they act until you observe them and they can range from absolutely evil to docile.
Not trying to be rude but if you payed any attention to what was going on in the world around you, you would know i was saying that in "cases you cannot keep them crowded" and he was saying "you cannot keep them crowded in all cases". Kind of the same thing.
Rude isn't what you came across as, but I'll be polite and leave it at that. I wasn't pointing to anything else in either post besides what I quoted.....thus the use of "quotes". In highlighting those phrases, it shows that no matter what ones experiences are with sunnies, you're not dealing with absolutes. The fact that your two experiences were similar is really neither here nor there. Just alluding to the fact that folks who have dealt with sunfish, like a lot of cichlids, always leave a little room for exceptions. You surely can't need any further clarification than that.
