Cool. How many sunnies you think I could keep? I was thinking of a pair. Are they like cichlids and should I have more females? I think I read they have nests that are a foot in diameter. So 2 pair would be pushing it plus I'd need a lot more filtration with the two turtles
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IMO it's bad to keep sunfish in pairs. What I've learned from keeping them (one actually
) and from nanfa it's best to keep sunfish either singly or in groups of 5-6 or more. And trust me, if they do spawn they WILL kill every other fish in your tank! If you do want to keep a pair (and are prepared to breed) then make sure you've got a male and female and give them the entire tank. Also once they spawn, take out the female and any other fish since there male will get very territorial which I explain below.
How sunfish spawning works is after the winter when the water warms up to about 60-65 F a male will begin to head into shallow gravel and sand beds where he uses his caudal fin to dig out a nest, then females (normally several) come in to the nest and the male courts them, then they have their spawning ritual which involves the male swimming side to side with the female in a circle until they release the egg and sperm. After a pair has spawned the male WILL NOT tolerate the female near the nest and it's solely the male's job to defend the clutch. Also unlike cichlids, sunfish only take care of fry after they've hatched for a few days and I've noticed a week is about max.
So just make sure you have an extra tank around the same size for the female if you plan on a pair. But if it were me I'd just do a single Warmouth or green sunfish
If you have some money to toss around you may want to invest in a new tank solely for natives. I've been trying to figure out a combo of natives and tropicals for my 75 ever since I got it but haven't figured out anything yet
. A 75 gallon would make a perfect sunfish community tank and you could have about a group of 6 longears in one possibly or maybe even pumpkinseeds!
PS I mentioned way above about nanfa, incase you didn't know about it it's the north American native fishes association. They have a forum as well and I learned most of my information about sunfish from smbass (Brian Zimmerman). Here's a good thread I started (just ignore the top two sunfish care sheets and skip to smbass's posts, he knows way more about them than I did when I wrote mine):
http://forum.nanfa.org/index.php/topic/14398-native-fish-care-sheets/
http://forum.nanfa.org/index.php?
