Newbie w/questions

[arcnburn]

I am currently raising livebearers(please, don't boo me off the site), and have decided that I need a agressive fish to help me with my cull duties, as well as to add something new to my ever growing collection.
My friend at the lfs suggested a pike as a very good option, how ever, I didn't have time to pick his brain too much about things like minimum tank size, adult size of fish, or best type of pike.
I was hoping for some advice. Any and all will be gladly accepted

 

[Renteria]

i think some type of small pike might work but im not sure. only been in pikes for a couple months, maybe compresceps. and Welcome to MFK

 

[robmcd]

I had a 29 g planted tank that was overrun by asstd mollies, platies, and guppies. Like friggin rabbits those fish are. 3 or 4 generations just going at it. It was so heavily planted that netting them was too destructive to the plants. So I just added a little Bcrawler and some juvinile svenis (2), and all the livebearers were gone in a week.

 

[fish speaker]

I assume you're going to keep a "cullinator" in a separate tank, and feed it the excess fry? If so, you have a huge selection of pikes to choose from that will be perfect. How large would the fry be that you would be culling and feeding to the pike? How much of a tank are you willing to give him?

If my assumption is incorrect, and you're planning on keeping something in the same tank, that's a much more difficult proposition, and you may end up with the same result that robmcd had, unless you go with a dwarf...and I'm just not sure how that would work out, either.

 

[arcnburn]

You are correct in your assumption, I do want to keep my cull fish in a tank of it's own. The fry that I would feed would be 1" max(I wouldn't want to let them get larger than that.
The tanks that I currently have at my disposal are a 29gal, a 30Long, a 40 breeder, and possibly, a 55gal

 

[dr_sudz]

You could get a few needle fish, they would take down fish of that size. They could go in the 40 or 55 nicely.

 

[sicxspeed]

if you are giving the fish its own tank, you have alot of options for 1 inch fry eating pikes. Lucius pikes seem to be available a lot now and will definitely eat those little fish, so would a Sveni, but for the 29 gallon, 30 gallon tanks, I would say get a Bellycrawler, maybe Regani would work as well, I have one that has no issue with taking down 1 inch feeders.