Yellow perch planted tank newcomer

[Owain4]

Hey im brand new to this forum and have been browsing. i havent found too much on people keeping yellow perch. im looking for any advice or help to a few questions i have. I have a 56 Gallon tank with a 240gallon per hour filter. i have a pretty heavily planted aquarium with 4, 4" inch yellow perch. 5 peices of drift wood and a couple snails. i feed my yellow perch minnows from the store. so i have a few questions.

1. With a heavily planted tank and sand/gravel substrate is there anyway of natural reducing the ammonia/ waste levels in my tank.? I'm trying to keep it as natural as i can, so i have to get a sucker i will but I'm trying to avoid that. do snails help remove excess waste or do they just eat algae?

2. im trying to get my perch to eat flake or freeze dried shrimp instead of store bought minnows (because of price and possible diseases or infections) but they are very very picky. any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[andyjs]

Perch can sometimes take a while to ween onto nonliving foods. Sometimes putting pellets or other foods into the filter current can help. They will hit the food thinking it is alive based on the movement and slowly learn that it is food.

Also, there is no magic animal fish or otherwise that removes waste. That is what biological filtration and ultimately waterchanges are for.

You will also eventually need much larger than a 56 as these fish should end up over 12" if kept properly

 

[fishkeeper1]

How I got my Bluegill and green sunfish onto flake foods was by feeding worms and stuff to them. I would drop a beetle or worm into the tank and eventually they would realize it was edible. I did that for a week and then drop in like 1 worm and then some flakes or pellets. Eventually the fish took to the pellets. Granted Bluegill are extremely easy to pellet train but if you also starve the fish for 4-5 days it will eat virtually anything. But try the first method I listed and if that fails try the starving method.

 

[Owain4]

awesome thanks for the input guys. the problem i have now is that the only stuff i have to work with is pet store foods. because i live in canada during the winter we dont have access to worms (which was what i used to catch them) im sure having worms would make the transition much easier. but maybe ill keep trying freeze dried shrimp until one of the them takes interest.

andyjs do you think i should remove some plants and clean the sand and gravel every now and again or would that just make things complicated. would a simple water removal and replace be effective? i work for a water company so purified water is easy to get, or should i just stick to tap water?

 

[snookman]

My 11" perch loves freeze dried krill. He will go to the surface and "pop" the krill with the big vacuum created by his mouth opening. I got mine when he was about 3-4inches long and never fed minnows to start. I started feeding the minnows one at a time right at the surface where the return from the filter was. Next I started dropping cut pieces of silversides in the same spot, again only one piece at a time until he was comfortable with this. At that point I started mixing it up with freeze dried krill, frozen bloodworms, cut up nightcrawlers, etc. I've had him now for about 5-6years. I will say that they are easily spooked for about the first year or so. I had an incident that almost led to his demise so make sure there are no areas for him to escape through at the top of your tank. Here's a link to some pics of mine:
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/album.php?albumid=4703

 

[fishkeeper1]

I could sell you some red worms. If you are interested

 

[Owain4]

thanks for the advice snookman. last night they were pretty active and i put a couple freeze dried krill in the tank. one of the perch took two and actually ate them but the others are biting them and spit them back out after. maybe they arent happy with the taste. i'll starve them for a day or two then try again. Also i cant look at your photos until i get full membership.

What size tank do you have?? have they grown alot bigger? i heard that the size of the perch relies on how big your tank is.

Thanks for the offer fishkeeper1. i'll pass for now unless it gets to be a real problem with them feeding

 

[andyjs]

What size tank do you have?? have they grown alot bigger? i heard that the size of the perch relies on how big your tank is.

People often say that any fish will grow to the size of its aquarium. While there is some truth to this, people usually don't tell the whole story. A fish kept in too small of a tank may be somewhat dwarfed, but this is mainly due to poor water quality and is very unhealthy for the fish. If water quality is good enough, a fish in even a very small tank can grow to a pretty large size and would end up pretty cramped.

At the hatchery where I worked, we had several perch in our display tanks in the customer area and they would eventually grow to somewhere in the 12-15" range

 

[warmouth]

A heavily planted tank will help with your ammonia and nitrates but not completely get rid of them without good filtration (but they will make your fish happier), I soaked my pellets for my greenies in fish oil of leftover tuna can juice (soak till soft ...not over a couple of minutes). Ps I love the look of our Yellow and Europes Redfin Perch.....highly underrated natives.

 

[Owain4]

andyjs thats pretty cool, must have brought a bit of livelyness to the office. i actually caught my yellow perch at a local lake. (Black Strap lake, Saskatchewan Canada) the lake has tons of huge perch. so im very hopefully these ones will also reach that size. i caught one the other week ice fishing at around 14" ill post a picture when i get it on my computer

warmouth i totally agree with you. Yellow perch are beautiful fish. they are very entertaining to watch, and very very clumsy hunters haha. as soon as i saw them hunting i gained more respect for them, because you never see that side of them.

another question. (im sorry im very new to owning an aquarium)
I plan on changing the water once a week. i was wondering how much water should i replace out of 56 gallons. i was under the impression that 5gallons (10%) of it would be alright. ?