classroom native tank help

[mriversinco]

Hi everyone,

I'm a middle school science teacher and I've got an empty 125g sitting around. Well, the weather finally got nice, so I had an idea about filling this tank with some native species. I'd love to get some fish the kids could really relate to, so I wondered if anyone had some ideas. I was thinking a couple of blue gills, or sunfish, maybe a perch or two, and maybe a small mouth bass (or large).

The water at the school is really soft, but with extremely high KH. The PH is also high at about 8.5 I don't know if this will matter, but I thought I'd throw it out.

thanks

Mike

 

[Noto]

Hi! Glad to hear you're teaching the kids about their native fauna!

Hardness and pH are not important to most North American fish. Just don't change any of the parameters too quickly, and they'll be fine.

Forget the largemouth and smallmouth bass, they are too big for your tank and will eat their tankmates. Sunfish, perch, and rock bass are good in tanks. You can also keep some larger cyprinids, such as golden shiners, common shiners, and creek chub with sunfish. Alternatively, you could leave out the sunfish and keep a diverse assemblage of community fishes, such as dace, shiners, darters, troutperch, madtoms, and topminnows.

Be sure to check Michigan fish and game regs. Collection has been curtailed in a lot of northeastern states thanks to the spread of VHS and other diseases.

 

[oscarcrazy]

The kids will love it. I teach 6-8 science and have a 55 native tank with a long ear and warmouth. The kids can't get enough of it. Great for teaching all sorts of things as well. I've used the tank to study pollution, evaporation, adaptations, ecosystems... the list can go on and on. I'd go with the sunfish, they are more cichlid like and will learn to interact with your classroom.

 

[fishkeeper1]

i would get for the larger fish, Bluegill, Pumpkinseed and Rockbass or Warmouth. The Bluegill are hardy and easy to get on flake foods, Pumpkinseed have the attractive colors, and Rockbass are like Largemouth or Smallmouth just half the size. As tfor smaller fish, rosy red minnows, or fathead minnows (same fish, different colors) and whatever else you like. And buy from theses 2 places, heard wonders from them!
http://www.aquaculturestore.com/

http://www.jonesfish.com/content/estore_list.asp?category=2&catname=Gamefish

Hope that helps and Good Luck!

 

[Rockbass6]

Pumpkinseeds or Warmouth would be cool, I always liked the color over bluegills. Bass get kind of big even for a 125 and can be kind of pushy/aggressive to their tank mates. I would do something that would interact over something like a bullhead. Some other possibilities are perch, crappie, maybe a rockbass, but they can be territorial, and like to have a "nest" to defend. Good luck your students should like it no matter what you keep, as compaired to most boing old classrooms.

 

[MultispeciesTamer]

my crappie is becoming the most dominant fish in the tank even with 3 bass and a channel. They are very neat fish. I would go with 1-2 crappie a bullhead or 2 and some kind of colorful sunfish or even a pickerel.