Posted by cindy on May 31, 2002 at 10:18:21:
In Reply to: Native Fish posted by jeff on May 03, 2002 at 08:36:18:
I have a 120 gallon tank with a Proquatics 2400 canister filter, and I use a second power head to reverse the flow of water into my UG filter so that the large amount of wastes produced by my native fish stay out of the gravel, hoping it will be more likely to be sucked up into the canister filter that way. It works pretty good for me.
I have 6 bluegill, 3 green sunfish, 2 largemouth bass, one bull head catfish, 2 channel catfish, one small gar and several crayfish that spawned in February. The young are about an inch long now, and I only see them when they are dumb enough to come out during the day, about 3 seconds before they find themselves viewing the insides of my fish.
I was able to keep a school of minnows (mostly creek chub and bleeding shiners) in the tank until most of the other fish got bigger than 4 inches, and now I settle for a second tank with them and some smaller crayfish, aquatic insects, etc. I love my native fish, they gladly eat strips of raw chicken and other raw table meats when I don't want to run to the bait shop, and most are quite happy with the trout chow that is their staple. Even one of the 2 bass is finally sampling it, but only the sinking kind. Neither will eat the floating trout chow, I guess the movement of sinking is barely enough to trigger him to bite.
I wish this board had more posts on it. I have been looking for something like this, but it doesn't seem to get much traffic. If some of you are reading and not posting, how about telling us about your tanks?
BTW - I am from Missouri and don't need a lecture about whether or not I am allowed to have these fish. I have never had one die in my care, and I release them every spring (when they ARE of legal size) and get a new batch of babies for the coming year.
cindy
