5" paddlefish !!

[Moontanman]

Dudes and or Dudettes if indeed you want to keep a fish like this plan ahead! Learn to successfully culture Daphnia magna or a similar crustacean so you always have a supply. Have a 360 tank in the wings, I'm talking about a 36" wide and 96" long and 24" high, If really wanted to seriously keep this fish I'd go for a 144" long tank. set up your first grow out tank way before the fish is purchased, I'd use a sand bottom and sponge filters. keep a few small fish in the tank to cycle it. Feed only live food at first until you establish the fish. Live food will go along ways to solving filtration problems. Live food doesn't rot if not eaten! the key here is be prepared! I am preparing for next season, with a little luck I'll have a 125 grow out tank ready and lots of live daphnia in rotation culture. I also plan to have a large above ground swimming pool in the wings at some point or my pelagic fish tank design built. a 125 should be fine for a year, a 50 breeder should be fine for initial grow out and acclimation. these fish are very bit as challenging as pelagic sharks and the amount of planning that goes into them should be every bit as serious. they are keepable but not with out some real planning.

 

[Piscineidiot]

Never had any experience with these things, but I thought I'd put a question out there: If these fish feed only on food in the current, why not deliver it to them there? Would it be possible to feed them much like you would fish fry, and deliver a squirt of live/fresh frozen food, or whatever they're eating into their face in the hope that they then open their mouth and inhale much of it? Just use a turkey baster instead of an eye dropper? Of course, this would become impractical once the creature got over a certain size, but might it be an option?

 

[Moontanman]

Never had any experience with these things, but I thought I'd put a question out there: If these fish feed only on food in the current, why not deliver it to them there? Would it be possible to feed them much like you would fish fry, and deliver a squirt of live/fresh frozen food, or whatever they're eating into their face in the hope that they then open their mouth and inhale much of it? Just use a turkey baster instead of an eye dropper? Of course, this would become impractical once the creature got over a certain size, but might it be an option?

I think the problem is left over food polluting the water. these fish are fed on tiny pellets at the hatchery but the water is filtered much better than a small aquarium. They have many fish feeding and better filtration and a huge water volume, the best way to over come this is to use live food. It's difficult to put a fish in a new tank and keep the water pristine. These fish need large clouds of food to get what they need. Once the tank is established and the fish is eating well you could try slowly adding tiny pellets to his food cloud. As he gets used to the pellets again he could get better at eating them and leave fewer of them in the water to swept into the filter and or rot on the bottom. Once again, planning ahead is the answer.

 

[new2natives]

for what its worth, i talked to my LFS, and we came to the conclusion that i wasn't paying close enough attention to my pH while doing all the water changes, and the pH got too low, and thats what caused it

and also, just to add, the LFS that sold me these gets their fish from a vendor, and the vendor was able to feed the paddles live brine constantyl ... so me and the LFS got fish from the 1st shipment, and fed them regularly on frozen. they grew very little in those 3-4 weeks, then the LFS got another shipment from the vendor of the same age fish, that had been living in live brine, they were almost 2" longer after that month!

there is nowhere around me that i can get live brine (that i have found)

 

[Moontanman]

for what its worth, i talked to my LFS, and we came to the conclusion that i wasn't paying close enough attention to my pH while doing all the water changes, and the pH got too low, and thats what caused it

and also, just to add, the LFS that sold me these gets their fish from a vendor, and the vendor was able to feed the paddles live brine constantyl ... so me and the LFS got fish from the 1st shipment, and fed them regularly on frozen. they grew very little in those 3-4 weeks, then the LFS got another shipment from the vendor of the same age fish, that had been living in live brine, they were almost 2" longer after that month!

there is nowhere around me that i can get live brine (that i have found)

Trust me when I say this (think of me as the Dr. House of aquarium keeping) Daphnia magna are easy to culture, more nutritious than baby brine, and they don't die in the aquarium. Fish will grow like crazy on Daphnia. I've raised everything from flounder larvae to mud-puppies on Daphnia. Along with live black worms they rule! If you must feed frozen food feed them Cyclopeze, a good pellet is Hikari Micro Pellet. What was your pH? Paddle fish should be relatively tough when it comes to pH, around neutral should do it with moderate hardness. Don't you keep sturgeon and pickerel? Any pH they are comfortable with should be fine for the paddle fish.

 

[new2natives]

well the ph dropped to about 6.0, and i am showing nitrite at about .5-1.0 now too, so i think thats probably what did it.
the sturgeon died as well, but the pickerel seem to be doing ok

any quick way to lower my nitrite and get the tank safe again ?

 

[Moontanman]

well the ph dropped to about 6.0, and i am showing nitrite at about .5-1.0 now too, so i think thats probably what did it.
the sturgeon died as well, but the pickerel seem to be doing ok

any quick way to lower my nitrite and get the tank safe again ?

Yep, I'm sure that didn't help, good bio-filtration is the best way to lower nitrites. You can get ion exchange resins but I've never used them. pH of 6.0 is really pushing it for a fish that normally comes from neutral to slightly alkaline moderately hard water. I catch pickerel in water where I live that actually irritates the skin it is so acid, black water full of tannic acid and often very soft as well. They are very adaptable and can live in hard alkaline water and soft acid water. The sturgeon/paddle fish are probably some what less adaptable. The nitrite is almost certainly the real culprit, nitrite messes with the gills and inhibits body functions. The problem with dead frozen food , when you put frozen food in the water the liquid parts of the food diffuses into the water and raise the levels of organics, ammonia and nitrites. If you have nitrites now you had ammonia recently as well. I use a surface water return into a sump, on some tanks I use a trickle filter, a five gallon bucket filled with garden pea sized lava rocks with a polyester pad on top, in some I use a sediment sump with azzola growing on top of the sediment tank. both of these are very adaptable so i never have to worry about ammonia or nitrite spikes. what sort of filter are you using?

 

[new2natives]

just a standard HOB right now since they were in a small tank, and i was using a bubble wand to keep the O2 up ...
but in the next week i was setting up a 75, and i hadn't decided on filtration yet.
i don't want p.fish anymore, but i am going to try and find more sturgeon if it's not too late this year ...
so the tank will contain the pickerel, and hopefully 2-3 kinds of sturgeon (i can get sterlet now, and possibly a white like i just had, and then i want to look for a diamond)

what would you do as far as filtration and oxygenation ?
also, i am going with sand bottom this time around, thats better right ?

 

[new2natives]

by biofiltration for the sturgeon, it would be just be lots of bacteria as well as activated carbon ?

 

[Moontanman]

just a standard HOB right now, and using a bubble wand to keep the O2 up ...
but in the next week i was setting up a 75, and i hadn't decided on filtration yet.
i don't want p.fish anymore, but i am going to try and find more sturgeon if it's not too late this year ...
so the tank will contain the pickerel, and hopefully 2-3 kinds of sturgeon (i can get sterlet now, and possibly a white like i just had, and then i want to look for a diamond)

what would you do as far as filtration and oxygenation ?
also, i am going with sand bottom this time around, thats better right ?

New2, I'm not going to lie to you, you are going to have problems with those fish in a 75. You need a good bio-filter. A 75 with big fish needs a something like a the old style marine tank set up, an over flow into a trickle filter and sump. This will allow you to concentrate on your fish rather than worrying about the bio-load. I am all about having a bigger bio-filter than you would ever think you need. A sand bottom is fine, less problems with food rotting in the spaces between the gravels and sturgeon like a soft smooth bottom. The HOB filter is not your best choice but it can be used if you are careful about feeding and make sure you don't disrupt the bacterial growth every time you clean the filter. The HOB just doesn't give you much room for error. Clean water is more than filtering out the debris and left over food. If it is rotting in the filter it is still affecting the aquarium water as much as it would if it was just laying around on the bottom. Are the paddlefish still available? I have a above ground pond set up that would be perfect and lots of daphnia! BTW live black worms are great for sturgeon as are daphnia!