I have a smallmouth bass, rock bass, bluegill, black crappie, and a pumpkinseed in my 210. The smallmouth bass and the rock bass own the tank. They chase all the other fish around. The SMB is about 16" and the rock bass is about 7". The bluegill is about 8", the pseed is about 6" and the crappie is about 5". I have some large driftwood in the middle but, but only some small pieces on the sides. Do I maybe need to add more places to hide so everybody can get along? I'd like my fish to swim around and enjoy themselves instead of living in the corners. Perhaps I am overstocked? It seems there is plenty of room to swim around. I had this problem when I only had the SMB and the bluegill/pseed too though.
Create Tank Mate-Friendly Environment For Natives
- Thread starter bjbass
- Start date
It's the nature of the SMB and Rock bass, both are pretty aggressive fish and having the Small mouth an rock bass quite a bit larger than it's other tank mates don't help. I would say some more hiding places may help but it still isn't going to turn everything into a peaceful environment. SMB will basically chase anything, there was actually a study done on why small SMB will hit much larger lures when compared to there overall body length and they came to the conclusion that they have a very poor depth perception.
This creates a poor environment when in the smaller confines of a home aquarium. In my past experience the best thing to keep them with is larger more agressive species such as LMB, Large crappie, green sunfish, channel and bullhead catfish. This tends to help things if the SMB will go after the other fish they will typically hold their ground or even run him off.
This creates a poor environment when in the smaller confines of a home aquarium. In my past experience the best thing to keep them with is larger more agressive species such as LMB, Large crappie, green sunfish, channel and bullhead catfish. This tends to help things if the SMB will go after the other fish they will typically hold their ground or even run him off.
perhaps adding a few more crappie might help to get the smb to lay off of it because of their schooling nature ive owned a lmbin with 4 black crappie and they stuck together and the bass kept its distance for the mot part
You need to add more wood but also make sure there is open swimming room. For the best results re-arrange the whole tank if possible. Can you post some pics of your rock bass?
Centrarchids in general are very aggressive fish. Even if you just had bluegill in the tank, you would find that there would be 1-2 top fish, and the rest would end up in the corners. Moving the wood around or adding more may help, but you will always end up with the same problem you are currently having. GL!