How are they personality wise now that they're older? Do they seem intelligent, do they pay you much attention other than feeding time?
I've got some Paddlefish!
- Thread starter Moontanman
- Start date
So far they are not showing much in the way of personality, they do interact with each other but I have never been one to try and pet my fish but they do not display interest like a sunfish would or a cichlid.
Paddlefish update, i still have one paddlefish left, he is doing well, sadly when I moved I lost three of them to water quality problems and one to jumping out of an outdoor vat. The remaining paddlefish is around 10" long and doing well, he is very active and of course being a paddlefish he swims all the time.
My paddlefish experience has taught me many things about this very interesting fish. They can negotiate a tank with square corners and there are paddlefish "dinks" that stay small, i was very skeptical of this to begin with but the last two years has shown it to be true.
I started out with 11 or 12 paddlefish and along the way i lost them to bird predators and to equipment failure as well as water quality problems when I moved to a new area.
The fish are easy to keep, they can negotiate square corners with ease, and will eat floating pellets. They swim in and around rocks and bogwood with ease.
They will eat small fish if they get the chance and are very sneaky predators. I don't think they could subsist on nothing but small fish but they will eat them.
Water quality is a must as with most fish and they like a strong current. They seldom feed on the bottom but I have seen them swim along the bottom to scare up live blood worms.
Currently i am holding the one I have in my basement in a snap set swimming pool of 150 gallons while I work on a 350 gallon build.
They look and act so much like sharks than even people experienced with real sharks mistake them for sharks.
All in all they are great fish for anyone who has a large aquarium to put them in, i can see one of the dinks living in a 150 easily but i would prefer a foot print of the tank to be 2' by 8', a shallow tank is ok as long as it has a large surface area.
I started mine out in a 30 gallon tank and subsequently moved them out to larger outdoor vats and ponds, I lost several to a predatory bird, they seem very vulnerable to that type predator.
I would start out any paddlefish i had in a small tank, a 20 long for a 2 or 3 inch fish is fine, moving them up to a 75 or so as soon as they seem to have problems in the small tank.
Rostrum wounds are easily healed in a green water tank.
I am happy to answer any questions anyone has about them.
My paddlefish experience has taught me many things about this very interesting fish. They can negotiate a tank with square corners and there are paddlefish "dinks" that stay small, i was very skeptical of this to begin with but the last two years has shown it to be true.
I started out with 11 or 12 paddlefish and along the way i lost them to bird predators and to equipment failure as well as water quality problems when I moved to a new area.
The fish are easy to keep, they can negotiate square corners with ease, and will eat floating pellets. They swim in and around rocks and bogwood with ease.
They will eat small fish if they get the chance and are very sneaky predators. I don't think they could subsist on nothing but small fish but they will eat them.
Water quality is a must as with most fish and they like a strong current. They seldom feed on the bottom but I have seen them swim along the bottom to scare up live blood worms.
Currently i am holding the one I have in my basement in a snap set swimming pool of 150 gallons while I work on a 350 gallon build.
They look and act so much like sharks than even people experienced with real sharks mistake them for sharks.
All in all they are great fish for anyone who has a large aquarium to put them in, i can see one of the dinks living in a 150 easily but i would prefer a foot print of the tank to be 2' by 8', a shallow tank is ok as long as it has a large surface area.
I started mine out in a 30 gallon tank and subsequently moved them out to larger outdoor vats and ponds, I lost several to a predatory bird, they seem very vulnerable to that type predator.
I would start out any paddlefish i had in a small tank, a 20 long for a 2 or 3 inch fish is fine, moving them up to a 75 or so as soon as they seem to have problems in the small tank.
Rostrum wounds are easily healed in a green water tank.
I am happy to answer any questions anyone has about them.
persons that realy want to keep them and have read about them will not do this becose you give bad advice that will result in killing them
Bad advice? Please point out any bad advice I have given.
I kept these fish under many varied conditions, from a 6,000 gallon pool to a 30 gallon aquarium, bird predators and equipment failure took most of them, three died due to the water being so bad in my new house, something I didn't know and had no reason to suspect. I have been open and honest about my experience with paddlefish, even the dinks need a large tank, they need good current and lots of open space but if you are willing to provide the environment they can be kept and are interesting fish.
As for killing them, can I assume you have never lost fish? you have never had fish die due to reasons within your control or outside it? Get real, I've been keeping fish for almost 50 years now, I do know a little bit about fish and one of the main things is they die, sometimes due to neglect sometimes due to circumstances beyond your control, but they do die, very few get to live out their natural life spans and very few will ever get the "maximum" size. Maximum size is not a rule that has to be followed even in the wild there are populations of fish that never eve get close to maximum size.
On top of that the fish I received would have been destroyed because they were dinks, I learned quite a bit by keeping them
I shared that every step of the way good or bad, can you say the same?
If you don't want to keep paddlefish then don't, but don't talk down to me like i am a child.
Correction on the fish, I started out with 10 not 12, i remembered two were DOA and I must have added the two to the original number after the fact instead of subtracting them, sorry for the mistake. My old man brain is getting senile i think sometimes...
I just read this entire thread. Very very interesting. I am currently an intern at a fish hatchery with Atlantic salmon and I am thinking about trying something similar in the means of watching how fish do in an aquarium setting which are seldom seen in a home aquarium. Good Job with the Paddle fish man and keep us posted on the last one!
The remaining paddlefish is doing well in my basement but today I sprayed poison for fleas in my basement and I am worried the vapors might kill him. This made me think of bringing everyone up to date.
I have observed many things from my paddlefish, I have seen them stir up organisms like live blood worms from the bottom but not with their paddles. he will not touch dead blood worms or any other dead food that is not floating.
I routinely feed my paddlefish feeder guppies now, he slowly but surely catches them in the 300 gallon swimming pool i have him in. The kiddie wading pool is perfect for him and he loves to swim into the current made by the filter pump.
He is pretty good at catching small crayfish and ghost shrimp, but small fish are his specialty, he slow swims around them until they are all in a close group them he lunges into the group to swallow the feeder guppies. He goes through about 100 of them a month. he is 10" long.
He still eats floating pellets well and ignores any fish on the bottom but top swimmers are in trouble. Anything alive interests him, i think he has complex electric sensors on his paddle. I would love to see his reaction to an electric fish like an elephantnose fish....
Now if he will just survive the poison spray in the basement... Update, it looks like I was worried about nothing, the fish is doing fine and nothing died, i hate spraying poison, always makes me sad...
I have observed many things from my paddlefish, I have seen them stir up organisms like live blood worms from the bottom but not with their paddles. he will not touch dead blood worms or any other dead food that is not floating.
I routinely feed my paddlefish feeder guppies now, he slowly but surely catches them in the 300 gallon swimming pool i have him in. The kiddie wading pool is perfect for him and he loves to swim into the current made by the filter pump.
He is pretty good at catching small crayfish and ghost shrimp, but small fish are his specialty, he slow swims around them until they are all in a close group them he lunges into the group to swallow the feeder guppies. He goes through about 100 of them a month. he is 10" long.
He still eats floating pellets well and ignores any fish on the bottom but top swimmers are in trouble. Anything alive interests him, i think he has complex electric sensors on his paddle. I would love to see his reaction to an electric fish like an elephantnose fish....
Now if he will just survive the poison spray in the basement... Update, it looks like I was worried about nothing, the fish is doing fine and nothing died, i hate spraying poison, always makes me sad...
He is supposed to be a genetic dwarf called a dink. he is about as big as he is going to get...
