--Bruce Stallsmith
Huntsville, AL, US of A
>From: Mysteryman <bestfish_at_alaweb.com>
>Reply-To: nanfa_at_aquaria.net
>To: nanfa_at_aquaria.net
>Subject: NANFA-- My first collection of the year
>Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 12:40:58 -0700
>
>I'd say I'm off to a pretty good start!
>
>I hit a semi-swampy area near my house. The area is latticed with dozens
>of small streams which are really all the same stream, just split up
>into numerous little branches which eventually reconnect. The substrate
>is sand. There is a lot of vegetation on the edges of the streams, but
>none actually in the water, except for an occasional clump on a sandbar.
>This area also has a number of "permanent puddles" in it, which are
>either fed by spring or seepage, and these are like little miniature
>lakes of a sort. Rarely more than a foot deep, or more than ten feet
>across, they don't look like they'd hold any fish. They do, though, and
>I can ususally find Pygmy Sunfish in them.
>Some of these puddles are just barely connected to a stream, and these
>serve as spawning areas for ( Ptero ) Notropis signipinnis. While the
>streams usually contain several adult fish at any given time of year
>except the coldest part of winter, these spawning flats are usually
>found to contain fry, hundreds of fry, about twice a year in the late
>spring and early fall.
>No signs of spawing yet, but the adults are out in force. I parked my
>truck on the street, right by the culvert where the stream runs under
>the road. This is right inside the city limits of Andalusia, Alabama, in
>a rather fancy neighborhood full of snooty people who look at my old
>rusty ford pickup with obvious disdain. Most of them have no clue about
>what treasure swims through their backyards.
>At any rate, I took my water sample bucket down the bank to the water. I
>usually get a water sample from collection areas, you see. The scrub was
>a little thicker than I remembered, but it was easy enough to get to the
>water. Then something didn't feel right, and I started to slip, and I
>heard an odd thrashing noise.
>We have a saying around here: "never step over anything you can step
>on." Well, I stepped over a log, and as a result I stepped right on a
>Copperhead! Boy, was he mad! He tried to bite me several times, but
>luckily he got his fangs stuck in my jeans and shoe. I managed to get
>ahold of him before he managed to bite me, and I flung him away from me.
>Whew!
>Well, after that little bit of excitement I got to work. Thanks to the
>snake, I hadn't yet paid any attention to the creek. As I bent down to
>fill my water jug, I could see the fish darting playfully in the
>sunlight, and I couldn't believe my luck... there were dozens of
>specimens in this one spot right by the street! Normally I have to go
>hiking through the woods along the creek for a quarter mile or more to
>find that many fish in a whole day. After Hurricane Opal, that's harder
>than it sounds, what with all the fallen trees and such.
>
>Heh.. I first found out that this fish lived here from a kid on a
>3-wheeler. I was walking around there to scope it out as a possible
>location for a paintball war. The kid was having fun, riding through the
>creek. He stopped and asked me if I was looking for "Bull minners." I
>told him that I didn't even know what one was. He told me that I'd
>probably see some if looked hard enough. He was right. Eventually I saw
>a few in a typical sort of spot where you'd expect to find Notropis
>species, namely a deep spot in the creek right below a little waterfall.
>I couldn't believe my eyes.. the sun was shining just right, and I could
>see their glorious colors quite plainly.
>Well, the next thing I did should be easy enough to predict. I rushed
>home, got a net and a jar, and went back to catch some. They were harder
>to catch than I would have guessed, but I managed to get a few.
>I thought at first that they were Notropis hypselopterus, a native fish
>I had actually read about in an aquarium book. I labored under this
>wrong assuption for quite some time, but eventually figured out that
>they were ( Ptero )Notropis signipinnis, the Flagfin Shiner. I used to
>do down in that area to catch them fairly regularly after that, and
>normally caught some Elassomas right along with them, along with a few
>species of darters we have locally. I could have sworn that I even had a
>stickleback once, but it got away before I could get a good look at it.
>I don't think we're supposed to have sticklebacks around here, though.
>Hurricane Opal came along though, and everything changed. The area
>became very difficult to navigate, and a trip that formerly took a half
>hour suddenly took two hours. I eventually quit bothering to collect
>them because it was too much work. Last year, though, I had an idea...
>
>I got a shovel and went to work. It took several hours, but I finally
>managed to make a deep spot by the culvert. I figured that it would
>attract the fish, making them easier to find. When I returned this year,
>I found that most of my work has been undone by erosion and the current.
>Most, that is, but not all. It worked! That's why, in about six minutes
>flat, I was able to catch FORTY of them right by the road.
>Try it. You might find that creating a habitat suitable for the species
>you're seeking is easier than trying to find that habitat.
>
>I took the fish and spread a few around to a few tanks. The pH of the
>creek is 6.0, and the tank water is about 6.5.
>The rest are in a 250 gallon kiddie pool full of Elodea plants.
>I'm trying to figure out a good way to sort them out by sex for
>breeding, but it's tricky. Some of the females are fat with eggs, so
>they're easy to spot, but I can't figure out what makes the males
>unmistakably male. None of them have tubercules on their faces or
>anything like that. Does anyone have any tips? Does size matter? Some of
>the fish are much bigger than the rest..could these be the "Bulls" that
>give the fish it's colloquial name? As popular as this fish is, I'm sure
>that someone here has spawned them. I've egg-stripped them before with
>success, and had them spawn before in pools, but only incidentally. Now
>that I'm trying to do it the "normal" way, in aquaria, I could use a
>little help.
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