Best Native Species as a Pet

[Freddie Mercury]

Sculpins
Chubs
Grass Pickerel
Pikes
Goby
Madtoms
Darters
Freshwater Drum
Lampreys
Sauger
Smelt
Bullheads

 

[Freddie Mercury]

White catfish
Bighead carp
black crappie
Blacktail Redhorse
Quillback
Spotted sucker
American eel
Airsac catfish

 

[fhawk362]

Well sounds about what i have, I have a 150g with 2 LMB, 4 brown bullhead, 2bream, 2 plecos, and 2 warmouth. I would say go with something like a sunny, bluegill, warmouth, crappie, LMB, and bullhead in combinations to your leisure. Or you can go further south and get some mayans, jags, pbass, midas cichlid, etc. I would say if you go with some panfish only keep one LMB or go without one cause its harder to feed the less predatory fish when the bass is attacking all the food. I've found these native fish hard to get off live food which is another reason why its harder to feed the less predatory fish.

 

[szymon328]

Well sounds about what i have, I have a 150g with 2 LMB, 4 brown bullhead, 2bream, 2 plecos, and 2 warmouth. I would say go with something like a sunny, bluegill, warmouth, crappie, LMB, and bullhead in combinations to your leisure. Or you can go further south and get some mayans, jags, pbass, midas cichlid, etc. I would say if you go with some panfish only keep one LMB or go without one cause its harder to feed the less predatory fish when the bass is attacking all the food. I've found these native fish hard to get off live food which is another reason why its harder to feed the less predatory fish.

mayans look mad nice i caught a few down in florida

my lmb was prety easy to ween off of live foods, i just gave him frozen krill, but i wont go as far as giving him pellets b/c to me that seems wrong... im just gona stick pellets into frozen krill lol but predetory fish are meant to eat live fish

 

[warmouth]

Rockbass have alot of personality and can be kept with bullheads and large shiners. we have Ozark bass down here that have nice markings also.

 

[Louie]

mayans look mad nice i caught a few down in florida

my lmb was prety easy to ween off of live foods, i just gave him frozen krill, but i wont go as far as giving him pellets b/c to me that seems wrong... im just gona stick pellets into frozen krill lol but predetory fish are meant to eat live fish

Mayans are pretty and hardy underrated cichlids. Surprised no one in cichlid forum keeps them. They do get big maybe bigger than Oscars.

 

[Louie]

Just to be clear: the LMB will not be in this tank, correct?

I have a large community tank setup with sunfish (redspotted, longear, green), rock bass, large minnows (stonerollers, river chub, striped shiner, golden shiner) and a studfish. It's a very entertaining tank.

You could also go for a more peaceable and colorful community with lots of darters, killies, madtoms, and smaller minnows such as Cyprinella, Lythrurus, and Notropis shiners and various dace.

Wouldn't madtoms eat darters?

 

[Louie]

Okay, I am planning on setting up a large tank after this summer (125-200gal)
and I think I'm going to go for native species. I have kept bluegill, sunfish and Large Mouth Bass, which I liked all of, but thanks to a kick butt round with ich only my one LMB is living. I was wondering what fish you would get. I am looking for anything really.

Rating system

1. Most popular

2. Best for tank size.

3. Easiest to obtain.


I am also hoping that I can keep two or three of the species in question, even if it has to be a species tank. I would prefer a multi species tank.

Input please.

Thank you for your time! Daniel

The Florida spotted sunfish is very pretty . I have caught some pretty one's however smaller and prettier is the Dollar sunfish.

I and several here keep the dollar sun and males have great color but females by sunfish standards are also pretty.

 

[dsaavedra]

largemouth are awesome but your tank is a little on the small side to keep one for any great length of time. go with some sort of sunfish! bluegill, pumpkinseed, redbreast, redear, anything really! sunfish are really cool. oh, and, not sure how you got ich but don't feed pet store feeders to your native fish! that is a surefire way to get ich in your tank. don't put any store-bought fish in with your natives either.

 

[warmouth]

largemouth are awesome but your tank is a little on the small side to keep one for any great length of time. go with some sort of sunfish! bluegill, pumpkinseed, redbreast, redear, anything really! sunfish are really cool. oh, and, not sure how you got ich but don't feed pet store feeders to your native fish! that is a surefire way to get ich in your tank. don't put any store-bought fish in with your natives either.

Yeah, Rockbass maybe tougher to find than Sunfish It would be easier in some places to find Longear, Dollars, or Pumpkinseeds and I believe they have prettier markings than many Cichlids and if you cant find them where you live you could order them from Jonahs, Zimmermans (on Nanfa website) or Sachs online. Feeders are hard to do, but I used to put lfs feeders into a 10g quarantine tank with just rocks and feed the crap out of them......if I found anything amiss in 2 weeks I would treat it before feeding to my Greens.