Re: NANFA-L-- Keeping Sculpin

Jeff Grabarkiewicz (threehorn_wartyback at yahoo.com)
Wed, 14 Sep 2005 09:40:40 -0700 (PDT)

Mike,

Well, I can tell you I was seining up in Fish Creek, Williams Co. Ohio. The water was probably 60-65. Pretty cool. The fish populations were pretty well balanced...sculpin did not rule the community. I did 9 species in a 20 foot stretch- bluntnose, stonerollers, blacknose dace, river chubs, gizzard shad, blackside darter, greenside darter, hog sucker, and one tiny stonecat.

Todd seined the upper part of this creek, he may have seen more sculpin up there. I imagine they might also become denser the further you move up.

Jeff

Lori Austin <providentaustin at yahoo.com> wrote:
Jeff, (Mike here)

Not to beat the topic...but, I kinda view the sculpin as my "show piece" (show for me I guess and my family to a lesser extent but I imagine as he/she survives and grows the dace may slowly disappear) ....for me sculpins are second only to the Esox (I have grass pike as well). Anyway, I understand that the banded sculpin can tolerate or is found in warmer temperatures and likely would make the better aquarium specimen.

However, I found mottled sculpin here in Ohio in streams that are so cold that your legs ache as a result of wading/seining. In these really cold streams they seem to number in the hundreds during a routine survey. Occasionally I will hit a stream that seems pretty warm and all of a sudden I will start finding sculpin (in Ohio we have primarily if not exclusively the mottled sculpin inland). An intern with OEPA told me that during a survey of Salt Creek trib. he was getting sculpin in a stream that was 82 degrees. My sculpin came from Big Darby Creek which is a typcial but diverse warmwater stream here in Ohio. The sculpin was found with about 35 other species. I wonder how much temp. plays a role, if at all, in how they are distributed.

Jeff Grabarkiewicz wrote:
Excellent Mike, thanks for the input. Right now my tanks are at 70, but they can get up to 75 on those very hot summer days. 65 or less during the colder months.

I too collect inverts from streams to feed with. In fact I had stocked this tank with numerous caddisflies, craneflies, mayflies, and snails prior to putting the fish in.

It seems like everyone has different experiences with sculpin and how predatory they behave. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

Jeff

Lori Austin
wrote:
Jeff,

A quick word about temp. and sculpins. I continue to maintain a half dozen redside dace, a half dozen redbelly dace, and one medium mottled sculpin in a 30 long. The temp in my basement has maxed at 78 degrees and all fish seem to be doing fine. I was certain the sculpin would do poorly once temps got above 70..but nothing happened that I noticed. Now, temps should slowly start coming down and by January I will see about 67 or so.

I have a tube permanently fixed with a suction cup to one side of the tank where there is also a sculpin hideout. When I feed ....I get the dace busy with their food and put the sculpin food down the tube....usually earthworms, frozen blood worms, and crane fly larvae (collected from local streams). At the high temps only the redside dace seem to get skinny fast if I don't feed them every single day.

later (Mike using Lori's computer....)

Jeff Grabarkiewicz wrote:
Thanks for all the advice Bob and Bruce. The sculpin I snagged was a mottled. They are stationed in my basement so I hope I can keep the water sub 70 degrees. I'm using a 20 gallon long tank with a rather large powerhead (270 gph). It has a very nice riffle feel to it.
Tank mates are timid feeders who are about 1.5 times larger than the sculpin.

I was worried I took a fish that I had no business taking.

Jeff

Bob Bock wrote:
Hi Jeff. I've kept Potomac and/or mottled sculpin. They're both found in a creek near here, and to tell you the truth, I never bothered to try to tell the difference between them.

Anyway, those two species like cool water and will probably falter and die if they get too much above 70 degrees. They love blackworms and can be trained to frozen offerings like brine shrimp. They are extremely predatory, however, and will pick off anything they can swallow. They'll try to eat fish that are just a little too big for them, and I've had some choke to death on fantail darters.

They aren't good competitors with the larger minnow and shiner species. If you've got them in a tank with a lot of faster species, you can train them to accept blackworms from a turkey baster (the Scharpf method). The turkey baster also may come in handy for making sure the smaller sculpins get enough to eat when their are larger sculpins around.

I kept mine going for quite awhile on blackworms and rosy red feeder minnows. It may take awhile for the sculpins to pick off the rosy reds. After the sculpins become acclimated to their tank, you can train them to accept rosy reds from a pair of forceps.

Aside from laying on the bottom, sculpins are active and alert fish. A few sculpins will soon set up discrete little territories when kept in the same tank They'll quickly learn to recognize the person who feeds them and draw near when it's feeding time. They'll even follow a fingertip drawn along the side of the aquarium glass.

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Grabarkiewicz
Sent: Sep 12, 2005 7:46 AM
To: nanfa-l at nanfa.org
Subject: NANFA-L-- Keeping Sculpin

Hey y'all- looking for a little advice on how to keep sculpin. Obviously, they are somewhat sedentary benthic fish that thrive in higher gradient coldwater streams. In captivity however, what is the best thing to feed them? Are they a "good" aquarium fish?
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