Sunfish Growth Rates

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eatingleg4peanut

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
May 21, 2010
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Maryland
Was wandering what the growth rates are for the following sunfish.

Green Sunfish: about 1.25" now.

Pumpkinseed Sunfish: about 1" now

Blackspotted Sunfish: about 1" now

LO Longear Sunfish: about 1" now

MO Longear Sunfish: about 3/4" now.

Available Foods:

Frozen Blood Worms
Frozen Beef Heart
Freeze Dried Bloodworms
Tropical Flake (Omega One Brand)
Shimp Pellets (Omega One Brand)
Med size slow sinking pellets (Med and small)
Omega One MED floating pellets
Hikari Massivore

right now they will only eat freeze dried bloodworms (why they wont eat frozen is beyond me) they only suck and spit pellets. Wandering which food would be best for biggest possible growouts. All the food listed is food I always have in stock for my other tanks.

Also rate of growth for Yellow bullhead cat is needed to, he's a little 2 incher now.
 
have you tried live brine shrimp? i would image that they're a lot like the little bugs and such that they eat in ponds. Maybe even duckweed? Just thowin it out there I really have no clue...
 
At the 1inch size I would feed them small scuds, brine shrimp and small worms. Rays is right you will have to thaw the worms out (mine never would eat frozen unless it was thawed). When they get big enough to convert to pellets I would soak them in tuna oil or fish oil (just long enough to soften them....you dont want them to fall apart) for a couple of months to get them to eat the pellets. Yellow Bullheads grow very fast for the first 2 years, and will reach 5-8inches long the first year and inbetween 11-14 inches the 2nd year, after that theyre growth will slow to only about 1-2 inches a year. Your big sunnies (the green and the Pumpkinseed) will grow 1.5-2inches a year for the first 5 years and abit slower after that. Your medium sized sunnies will grow about 1-1.5 inches for the first 5 yrs. I hope you have a large tank with plenty of hiding spots (rocks, clay pots, driftwood etc.)......otherwise I believe alot of your sunnies will fall prey to your Yellow Bullhead when he reaches the 1-2 yr mark. These growth rates were taken from the books American aquarium fishes and Fishes of Missouri. In my personal experience I had 2 green Sunfish in a 39g. that I caught at around 4 inches; one grew about a inch in a half a year and the other one grew an amazing 2-3 inches a year until he outgrew the tank and killed his buddy, I then had to put him in a friends pond (Greens are very territorial). With a large tank I could have put more rocks and driftwood in and kept dithers and would probably still have the Greens.
 
Mine bluegill went from 3" to 7" in a year! Feed every other day with mix diet of bloodworms, kril, market shrimp, chiclid stix, wax worms and night crawlers. It would eat anything i throw into a tank inclouding some of a common aquarium plants. Unfortunetly it grew to big and now its in my friends pond.
"I know its not on the list but grow rates should be close "
 
I had about 15 Greensunfish in a 1000 gallon koi pond. They had space and a lot of food. I netted them when they were all about .5 to 1 inch. Once they were big enough to eat the koi food they blew up and some of the larger females grew to about 5 inches in the first year. Most of the males were about 3 inches. In the picture below the green sunfish are only about 10 months old. It's kinda hard to see them mixed in with the koi and goldfish. When these fish were 2 years old and started building and garding nests, they killed most of my goldfish.

DSC03368.jpg
 
A lot of this has already been said, but I just wanted to say this as well:
The Lepomis species of sunfish you have will likely stay on frozen foods until they reach the 1.5 or 2'' mark. At this size, they are much easier to convert to pellets (I have been using Hikari pellets for years). Remember growth rate during the first year or so is enormous compared to growth later in life. As others said, some of these fish can grow from 1'' to 4 or 5'' in a year. I'd imagine on a good feeding regime, you green and pumpkinseed could reach the 4-5'' range in a year, the longears and blackspotted sunfish reaching about 3-4'' in a year. But if you have females, these ranges could be even less. Each fish will have their own growth rates.
Good news is once one of your fish is converted to pellets, the others pick up VERY quickly!
 
The Green sunnies were just trying to protect their nests....Green sunfish along with Dollar sunnies are the most aggressive of the Lepomis sp. Koi and Goldfish are in the carp family and are egg eaters so the sunnies were naturally out to prevent that from happening.
 
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