# US Native Fish



## Nelumbo74 (May 2, 2008)

any other native fish enthusiasts on here?


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## Jareardy (Feb 14, 2008)

I'd love a good resource for native us fish and plants. That'd be pretty cool to set up a North American Biotope.


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## Nelumbo74 (May 2, 2008)

I have never ordered from this place, but they come highly recommended from other native lovers, and their site is a good reference for east coast, southern US natives.

http://www.aquaculturestore.com/

This is THE best book on native fishes, and has a pretty good section regarding native aquatic plants. Although, I think there are far more US natives available, since this book was published.

http://www.amazon.com/American-Aqua...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210357338&sr=8-2

I'm fairly lucky for a couple reasons. Most of my native fish come as by-catch from my LFS in fish shipments from FL, which I get for free. They would typically use them as feeders. I get the following fairly commonly:

Lucania goodei (bluefin killifish)
Fundulus chrysotus (golden topminnow)
Etheostoma fusiforme (swamp darter)

I don't know if you would have the same luck on the west coast, but look in the ghost shrimp tanks. That's where I always find the natives.

The second reason I'm lucky, is I'm a Chattanooga native, which has the largest freshwater public aquarium in the world, and it is mostly devoted to US native fauna and flora. It's worth the trip to visit, and has some wonderful native planted tanks. You can get great ideas for US native biotopes there.

Let me know if you ever have any questions about natives!


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## AaronT (Apr 26, 2004)

Our club is having Bob Bock from NANFA speak at our June meeting. Following that meeting we plan to do a local collecting trip. It should be fun.


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## Nelumbo74 (May 2, 2008)

Awesome! Do you currently have any natives? Let me know what you catch!


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## jazzlvr123 (Apr 29, 2007)

yunno whats interesting the Rarest fish in the entire WORLD is native to USA. its a desert fish. desert and fish sound like an oxymoron but they are out there check out this article


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## Nelumbo74 (May 2, 2008)

i'm very familiar with it (Cyprinodon diabolis), and its plight. here is a very interesting article about its habitat. i don't know of too many other fish that inhabit 93 degree water.

http://www.fws.gov/nevada/protected_species/fish/species/dhp/dhp.html


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## scolley (Mar 20, 2005)

I tried hard to set up a native Gulf Coast biotope only to have zero success. The tank I set up had a poisonous element in the substrate, which made success impossible. Stupid mistake on my part, but unfortunately only discovered after I tore the tank down. Anyway...

I had a longnose gar, large mouth bass, multiple variety of sunfish, flag fish, and rainbow darters. It was WONDERFUL while it lasted. But the gar turned out to be illegal in my state. The bass was just a killing machine and had to be removed. The flag fish were indeed (true to reputation) wicked fin nippers. But the sunfish were WAY cool, and the darters EVEN more so.

I agree wholeheartedly with your book recommendation. Never seen a better one. But should you seek a "general" source for native fish, IMO Jonah's Aquarium is the best. Though there are some better for specific fish.

Best of luck with the natives! More people should be doing this. North America has some wonderful fish. Out plants are pretty cool too!


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## Nelumbo74 (May 2, 2008)

Jonah's is a very good reference, but I have never ordered from them.


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## joshua_pope2001 (Jan 17, 2007)

I have reciently set up a 125 gallon native michigan fist aquarium.... I have to say that it is by far my favorite tank that I have done..... I wish I knew more people doing native tanks.....


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## Nelumbo74 (May 2, 2008)

joshua_pope2001 said:


> I have reciently set up a 125 gallon native michigan fist aquarium.... I have to say that it is by far my favorite tank that I have done..... I wish I knew more people doing native tanks.....


I've found there aren't many of us in the planted tank community. Most planted tank hobbyists want their fish to be just as exotic as their plant selection. Of course, the real problem is that most LFS's don't carry a selection of native fishes due to the requirements of additional permits/sales licenses for selling native U.S. fauna. You can find other native tank hobbyists at www.nanfa.org, and there is a handful of online retailers that have a good and reliable selection of native fish and inverts.


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## Afyounie (Aug 10, 2007)

I have been contemplating bringing a net with me when I go kayaking. I see so many fish and I want to try setting up a tank for them. I collect plants and have setup a mini s with only plants I collected from a kayak trip. I would have used native soil, but I didn't have enough containers so I am using aqua soil. I have dwarf platys, but I wish I had some small native fish that stay only about an inch long. 
Its hard though to collect fish because you have to keep the animals alive until you get home. So far the only animal I collected are snails and I was successful, so I may try fish the next time.


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## Nelumbo74 (May 2, 2008)

I've got a simple fix for you. Wal-mart carries a battery-powered air pump in the sporting goods section. It's perfect to take native fish collecting, and it has a metal clip you can use to clamp it to the side of a regular mop bucket.


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## Afyounie (Aug 10, 2007)

I think I will look into that. I don't spend much time in the outdoor section anymore, but the next time I go by I will get one.

How water proof is the air pump? I would be takin it on a kayak and don't want it to die on me if it got wet.


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## Nelumbo74 (May 2, 2008)

Well, I can't attest to how water-proof it is, but I can say it's very simply constructed and cheap. If it were to stop working, it would be very easy to replace. I think I paid $9 for mine.


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## joshua_pope2001 (Jan 17, 2007)

I love my battery airpumps. I dont know what I would do with out them


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## zer0zax (Mar 25, 2007)

I have had pumpkinseed sunfish (Lepomis gibbosus) before, they bred twice in my aquarium! It was lightly planted and I used sand in the middle, so when the male would dig a nest in the sand the rest of the plants would be fine. What amazed me is that the sunfish would root around in the sand for food and kick up debris on the plants, but after they were done eating they would rub the plants until they were clean, and then the fish would quite rubbing. At first I thought it was parasites or bad water quality, but they only did it if they saw a dirty plant...never heard of that before!

The breeding male was highly territorial, and I almost hit the ceiling the first time he bit me (It hurt!), I learned to keep my hands out of the tank really quick when he was nesting. IMHO pumpkinseeds would put any discus to shame when they are 'in the mood'.

Battery air pumps are worth their weight in gold! I didn't have to use them though, I caught my fish 20 minutes from my house and put them in a large cooler. I was fishing for 3 hours, and every half-hour I would change 30% of the water, When I was done fishing I did a 50% water change and headed home. Usually I would acclimate wild caught fish over an hour with a slow drip line, remove 25% of water from cooler, fill back up with drip line from aquarium, and repeat. If you catch a fish in winter, acclimate it over a 24 hour period. I caught a warmouth (Lepomis gulosus) in near freezing water, and kept him in a cooler with a strong air pump running for 24 hours. The next day I would start the dripline procedure, same as above. The warmouth was like a pet dog, he would hide all day but if I walked by the aquarium he would fallow me around as best as he could and beg. I fed him gambusia minnows once a week, and after a while he learned to take pellets like the other sunfish. At one time I had 4 warmouth and 4 other various sunfish (110gal) and only 2 warmouth would actually eat pellets, so every week I had to go to a lake and net a bunch of minnows and shut the lid quick! For 5 minutes fish would fly everywhere, and then the warmouths would stop begging for 5 minutes.....

Sorry for the long post! In short, make sure you follow all rules and regulations. In some states it is illegal to keep gamefish, in others captive gamefish count against your daily catch limit. I live in Oregon right now and bass are listed as gamefish, but pumpkinseeds are listed as something else (can't remember), no limit on catching pumpkinseeds, but as far as keeping them goes there is a lot of gray area, no defined rules and real hard to find information on keeping them captive.


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## jns (Aug 19, 2008)

The Chattanooga aquarium is wonderful indeed. Visited it several years ago and was very impressed by the native fw display. We have a few natives in CA that are suitable for small to medium aquariums including pup fish, roach, hitch, Sacramento pearch, etc..


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## ryanca530 (Oct 16, 2008)

I caught a few bass fry in the Sacramento river about a month and a half ago and they have been doing great and growing like crazy. When I caught them they were barely visible (like a super small tadpole). They seem to be very hardy in any condition I have put them in but as of now they are in my planted tank. They started out in my 20gal community tank and really held their own against some female bettas and a gourami. Awesome fish to watch and will eat anything you give em.


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## moosie7 (Mar 8, 2015)

I have a great interest in native American aquarium fish. I live in Western Kentucky and go on collecting ventures often in fair weather. Very interested in contacting other enthusiasts with an emphasis on providing each other with local species.


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## HDBenson (Sep 24, 2014)

I'm a local collector too. Common species for me aren't the prettiest but here is a wide diversity in MS. We have a few species of live bearers, several topminnows/killies, several shiner species, Elassomas(pygmy sunfish), at least three or four species of Mad Tom(dwarf cats), darters, sunfish, etc. Our Plant selection is pretty wide too. I have several species of plants in my tanks like Ludwigia, Juncus, Sagitarias, Hygrophila, floating species, grasses, bladderworts, Myriophyllum, and a few others. I've been talking with some of the Mississippians on TPT about several collecting trips around the state in the late spring. If any West AL or East LA people are interested PM me.


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## Gilraen Took (Apr 19, 2007)

I've got some heterandria in my 20 that seem to like it. Got them when a local chain store got a lot of them in with their feeder guppies. I also had some swamp darters for a while(before some sick fish wiped out my tank) that I got from a ghost shrimp tank at my LFS. I have always wanted to collect natives. Seems like it'd be a great way to make a tank. 

Sadly the only native PLANT I have at the moment is a sprig of moneywort in my emersed little planter that I grabbed from a local ditch. I need to go back to it and grab some of the ludwigia one of these days too.


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