Re: Native Fish

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: Yes, I meant compared to crickets, worms, etc. : I had the one bass for about 4 years. She was gut hooked by a fisherman with bait and was only about 7". She was bleeding a lot but after a few days in the tank she seemed better. A month later she was 8". I have had others for up to three years. One grew from 5" to 15" in less than a year. I would have liked to have kept her but did not have the room. : Now don't laugh. I built a cooler for my trout tanks. It was an apartment size refrigerator that I drilled a hole in each side and ran a tube in each hole. I then used a stainless finned cooler, similar to an automotive radiator but about the size of a transmission cooler. I attached it to the tubes and used sheet metal to redirect the cold air flow inside the fridge to flow over the cooler. It worked great and actually made the water too cold initially. I just used a power head to pump the water. The tank had three 600gph power heads flowing in one direction with tubes on the opposite side for the intakes. The second tank had the same flow but with a custom overflow to achieve a better current. : Trout are very hard to keep and require perfect water. Rainbows seem to be the easiest and can live fine with water temps in the 70's. My favorite was the brooks though. They like REALLY clean water and cold temps. I had a local wild brook that I never got to eat prepared food. I did get him to eat brine shrimp and he loved red wigglers. : Well thank you! I have a lot of random knowledge. I have many hobbies but always find time for my fish. I have been keeping fish since I was around 7. That makes it almost 30 years. For a while I was breeding and selling to many local stores. That was about 12-15 years ago. : You are involved in education. Here in NY you can get permits and funding for projects such as yours. I setup a couple of systems at schools. I'm pretty sure they were funded by the state, or at least partially funded, though my work was voluntary. : : : : Wish I had found this place long ago. How long has it been going?... : : I am not sure, I just discovered it late May, and after checking it daily for a week or two, just gave up! (Not much traffic.) It looks like the first post was on Jan. 2, and there don't seem to be enough posts to have bumped any off the bottom. : : : I will not lecture you on keeping them as I am also guilty but I will comment on the feeding habits. While raw beef and chicken may not harm the fish (maybe if the only source of food) it is surely not an adaquate diet. Too much fat and fatty acids for bass. Also the trout pellets are not the right formula for bass. You would be better off with cichlid pellets. Trout food are designed for trout, which live in cold water and have different nutrition requirements. I always fed meal worms, crickets, nightcrawlers, fish and craws.... : : Mine get very little raw table meats, as I indicated, only occasonally in the winter. I find it hard to believe the raw (lean) beef strips and skinless breast chicken strips are all that high in fat, unless you mean as compared to crickets and earthworms (something like 70% protein, aren't they?) Anyway, they get very little, mostly minnows and crickets from the bait shop in the winter, and all sorts of aquatic goodies my kids and I get from the creek in the spring, summer and fall. As you can see, I am NOT a photographer, and just used a regular point and shoot camera from about 5 feet away to get the BAD photo inserted. My husband gave me a pretty good Minolta DiMAGE 7i digital camera this summer, and it has improved the quality of my shots of my tropical and coldwater aquaria at home this summer, so I will try to get some better pics of the native tank after I start it up again in September this year. (It will be a month later than normal, because we are moving the entire science dept. into the new science wing September 1st, and I can't set it up before the move, and it won't look good until a month later.) : : The teacher across the hall from me made the mistake of feeding his those green "nitro" nightcrawlers one time, when that was all they had at the bait shop, and when the fish pooped the next day, he had fluorescent green water! (It was worse with the fluorescent lights on.) His students liked it, but it faded for about a week, then when he was absent one day, I did about a 50% water change (since he never did them, I did them after school or on the days he was absent, and asked the subs not to mention it in their notes to him.) : : I should have mentioned that the "trout chow" I feed them is a mixture of floating catfish chow, sinking trout chow, and floating cichlid pellets, the largest size. The lowest in protein is the catfish chow, not quite as low as goldfish pellets. I prefer to give fish a variety of processed and live foods. It seems to cover as many trace needs as possible. I even throw in romaine lettuce, fresh spinach, and sprigs of live aquarium plants (I prune from other tanks) occasionally, but have NEVER seen them nibble or show the slightest interest in them, and toss them to the goldfish after 12 hours or so, who attack them like pirahnas. : : You must keep yours longer than I do, or else just feed them better, because I don't think mine have ever gotten bigger than about a pound and a half (just guessing) between August and May, when I release them. : : How did you keep the water cold enough for the trout? Did you buy an expensive chiller, or just keep the A/C cranked down to about 60 degrees? They are my favorite fish, but I have only dreamed of raising them. Even if I could convince my husband to let me fork over the serious cash to set up a chilled aquarium, it would be a three hour drive to anyplace I could release them when grown. : : I have seen you post on other boards, you sure are knowledgable about all sorts of aquaria. How long have you been at it? : : cindy

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