Cant wait to see pictures of the 55g with the darters! Good luck though- keep it smaller maybe a pirate perch would be fun but they will hide all of the time
I need some advice!
- Thread starter Brickosaurus
- Start date
I guess that would depend upon where you live and what temps you will be maintaining. I'm not really a cichlid guy; maybe there are species that will live year-round at cool temps (as opposed to just cooling down during winter) and which also don't grow up to be aggressive jerks, but I don't know of any. Darters are small, non-aggressive, fairly fragile fish; not really what one thinks of as cichlid-tank material.
Centerpiece fish? This is an aquarium, not a floral arrangement; I don't think in terms of centerpieces, but I do think that darters themselves are pretty impressive aquarium fish in their own way. If you can snag perhaps a few Rainbow Darters or similar colourful species, how much more of a centerpiece does your tank need?
Edited to add:duanes beat me to it; gotta type faster. Yeah, baitshops can be great sources for oddball natives from time to time; so can minnow traps and seines if you like that sort of thing. Or, if you are in the U.S. , why not check out places like Jonah's that sell natives? Some of the dwarf sunfish like Black-banded might work for you. They are, like darters, kind of picky about feeding and sometimes simply won't switch to frozen, but usually it can be done; Black-banded Sunnies are probably the easiest to train onto frozen of the dwarves.
By centerpiece fish I just meant a larger/medium sized fish. Checking my local bait shop is a great idea! I'll definitely check that out
Here are some pics. I still need to add a few hiding places but so far it's going well!
So I went to the bait shop and asked for 8 fathead minnows and 4 shiners. It wasn't until I got home that I realized the guy there gave me about 30 minnows and 5 shiners!
Idk what to do now. Fathead minnows rarely get over an inch but that's still a lot of fish! Idk if I'm overstocked for a 55 or what I have is fine. I'm assuming I'm overstocked. Should I just let some of the minnows go into the creek?
Idk what to do now. Fathead minnows rarely get over an inch but that's still a lot of fish! Idk if I'm overstocked for a 55 or what I have is fine. I'm assuming I'm overstocked. Should I just let some of the minnows go into the creek?
Heck no! I would rather use worms for fishing. I don't have the guts to use them as bait lol
Fathead minnows will easily reach 3" and given a year will often reach 4".
...and no, never release a non-native species into a waterway; it's a recipe for ecological disaster and restrictions on the hobby.
Well thankfully fatheads are native to where I am so I should be fine. I had no idea they get that big! When I googled it, the answer was 1 inch
They're actually pretty cool in several ways and one of them is communication. Fatheads will swim freely with almost zero schooling tendency but when a threat is sensed they release a hormone or other chemical that causes them to bunch up. Becoming aware of the communication and observing them closely for a few years is what caused me to reconsider live feeding; I'm no longer a fan thanks in large part to a handful of lowly Fatheads years ago.
I don't have fatheads, but I have the closely related bluntnose minnows and had to remove them from my low aggression darter tank because they are nippy jerks. I put them in my cichlid tank and they do a great job at harassing everyone.
