Hey Guys
Thanks for the responses. You're both right about about catching the fish. I used to catch them all the time when I was a kid. All of the fish on the list live in my area or at least my state. What I'm trying to do is get one of every species of catfish (not including madtoms) that lives in Virginia for my koi ponds in addition to a few other native fish like the gar. The smaller species will be in the smaller pond and the larger in the larger pond. The thing is I am pretty adamant about the fish being small. preferably babies. I want to raise them in my aquarium over the winter get them about 4 inches and then put them in the pond. I want them small so I won't have as much trouble get them accustomed to captivity and also to decrease the chances they will have parasites. So far I have found it pretty hard to find babies. I was able to get some baby brown bullheads, but no luck on the rest. I also don't have a lot of time these days to go fishing. I did try minnow traps and cast netting to no avail. Any bait suggestions? Also from what I have read white catfish and black bullheads are a little harder to find in my area than the rest. Maybe next summer I will try a little harder to get my hands on them. I did find someone selling yellow and flat bullheads. My LFS can get channels. So what's listed above is what I need help with.
Also maybe someone can help me with this. Last year I found 3 or 4 bullheads about 2 or 3 inches. Put them in my aquarium with a pleco and and a big angel fish. The bullheads ate fine and got really fat, but then their stomachs never got smaller. Even if I hadn't fed them they would look huge. I would wait a few days to feed them and they still looked like they would all pop. The 10 year old pleco and angel were fine and normal so I can't figure out what I did wrong with them, but the bullheads finally all died. Their bellies literally burst open. Any Ideas on what that might have been? Thanks for the help guys,
Jacob
