kdrun76;3463641; said:
I am sorry, but this makes me laugh. A 20gallon Long is only 30 inches long. If we presume these 6" fish that you are suggesting are ok in this tank are backed right tight to opposing ends, there is only 18" between them! Each fish gets a territory that is only 15" long, if they sat centered within their territory there would only be 8" between them. Keep in mind that these are very aggressive and territorial fish. You are trying to suggest that fish that can't even get 2' apart from each other are going to get along?!?!!!???
Wow, ignorance is abundant!
Give this kid a break!!! He doesn't need to be condescended to, he just wants honest help. I would definately get a larger filter Minnow Magnet. Regardless of what anybody's advice is, a larger filter will definately make your life a LOT easier. The reason is because both Greens as well as Bluegills produce A LOT OF WASTE!!! You will constantly be scrubbing algae off of your glass and rocks otherwise.
As far as size of aquarium goes, you don't want to exceed the number of inches worth of fish in your tank, with the number of gallons that it holds. This is only a rough guideline, and shouldn't be followed exclusively, but a good rule of thumb. Everyone here will tell you that you need a BIGGER tank, but its merely because everyone here LOVES to keep fish SO MUCH that most all of us want to tend to spoil our fish as much as possible too.
I realize that it seems counter intuitive that anyone willing to take a fish from its natural habitat and put them in a box in their home, would have any room to talk at all about what is good or not for the fish. I think though, that everyone just wants to be sure that your fish are as spoiled as the rest of them here on this website, but everything takes $$...
In all honesty, as much personality as Bluegills have, I've always had better luck with small schools of young of year Green Sunfishes. In your now set-up 20, you could easily house (4-6) 2" Greens for quite a while longer than you could with already mature fish. The Bluegills tend to become Nitrate factories and will either force you to get much larger filtration set-ups or be constantly doing maitenance on your tank. I think big Bluegills really require BIG TANKS in order for the tanks to stay looking nice and water quality to stay good too.
If it were up to me, (which obviously it isn't) I'd put 4 SMALL (no bigger than 2") Greens, and one of those 1 1/2" Carp in there. This set-up would be good until you could do your research on some of the DIY projects here on the site. After you check out the DIY tanks, you could then work on building your own 200+ gallon set-up out of plywood, liquid rubber, and plexi-glass for probably less than $500. That way you'll be able to build it to the exact sizes you'll need, and by that time the native fish you've got will be ready for their larger home. By then, you'll probably have upgraded your filtration set-up as well, and you could slowly introduce Bluegills, Pumpkinseeds, Red Ears, Warmouths, Sacramento Perch, Tule Perch (well maybe not Tule Perch) or whatever other Sunfish that you were interested in to the newer larger tank.
One other thing to consider is dither fish. The next time you're out fishing (probably this afternoon you lucky little sucker), throw out the minnow trap, and see if you can't catch some decent sized minnows. If they aren't too small that they'll become lunch, then the Bluegill and Green might be able to stay preoccupied enough with them, that they won't mess with each other. I use fathead minnows in my Longear tank, and believe it or not, I've had a pair in there for well over a year now. The big Male Longear doesn't pester the females NEARLY as much when the fatheads are in there. Just something to consider, but do realize that it will also incease the bio-load on your filter.
Best of luck to you. Please keep us posted. take care.
Ben.
