Sunfish information

[jiaw37]

Hey guys,
I am planning to start stocking my 150 gallon fish tank with sunfish. I am posting here to get some general information on Sunfish( temperament, behavior, diet, compatibility, etc) . I currently have a black ghost knife,a dinosaur bichir, and a school of clown loaches in a forty gallon to grow out. How do you think some sunnies would fit in with them when they get bigger?
Thanks

 

[Gill Blue]

no.

 

[pops]

less i am thinking dif, sun fish a cold water fish?

 

[xraycer]

less i am thinking dif, sun fish a cold water fish?

They would have no problem living in tropical temps. May not work with the OP's stock though......sunfish may be too aggressive

 

[pops]

ahh, thanks, never thought of putting blue gills and sun fish in a tropic tank. always thought of them as cold water.

 

[xraycer]

ahh, thanks, never thought of putting blue gills and sun fish in a tropic tank. always thought of them as cold water.

Sunfish tends to grow much larger in Florida than they do in the northern states

 

[pops]

makes sense i think about it, use to catch them at lake wolfered in southern cal, water was quite warm in the summer, them and blue gill, treble hook and piece of chewed gum all yu needed.

 

[divemaster99]

Sunfish aren't necessarily coldwater. They can tolerate cold water but I'd classify them as a temperate water species. The PFBC even classifies them as warmwater for local waters and in my local lake there's shallow areas where many sunfish dwell in the summer that get into the mid 80's! You can easily keep sunfish with tropicals but they're but suited to go with trops such as cichlids than things like tetras and loaches due to their aggressive nature. A single bluegill could just decide to want to assert it's dominance and massacre every other fish out of the ones you listed in the tank if it wanted to.

 

[pops]

on my old property here in western Washington had a large fish pond. maybe 700,000 gallons, use to plant with trout but got tired of the river otters eating them, so threw some wild caught blue gills and sun fish along with a couple of large mouth bass, all did well, it did freeze over a few times a winter, this where my cold fish thinking comes from for them.

 

[AMcCaleb]

They do have a wide temperature range that they can adapt to. However, they are an aggressive species. Some sunfish are more aggressive than others though. Some of the smaller species are much less aggressive. However, the more typical sunfish(bluegill, green, redear, pumpkinseed, warmouth, etc) are much more aggressive. I used to have a black ghost knife and it would be a sad display to have one of those ripped to shreds by the sunfish.
If you have your heart set on mixing you would probably be best served by sticking to sunfish and SA/CA cichlids.


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