Re: NANFA-- more sunfish spawning [long]

Gordon (gordonj_at_fundy.net)
Fri, 8 Feb 2002 18:05:34 -0500

Hi Ray. (and everyone else)

Do you find that sunfish are easy to spawn in a pond setting?

I may not get my pond up and running before the high water in the spring
(Eastern Canada on the St. John river) so the sunfish seem to spawn before I
open up my seasonal pond.

Any thoughts / suggestions?

My front yard pond is 1500 gallons, (8 feet by 6 feet, 4.5 feed deep at
deepest point), with lots of shade from the trees around it.

I use Javamoss for a deep cover plant (sits on the bottom, and shelf areas)
This should give a place for wrigglers to hide in the deep water.

I use hornwort as a surface floater (also cuts down on algae by blocking the
light.) This gives my guppy fry a place to hide so they don't get eaten
immediately. Last summer my pumpkin seed sunfish has flake food as a
staple, and grasshoppers, flies, crickets and anything elsy my kids would
throw in. Fingers and toes would be nibbled if they went in. The sunfish
were very agressive. They ate all my smaller shiners, most chubb and lots
of my green eel young.

the local water (well and river) is near pH 8, and very hard. I filled the
pond with 50% well (hard) water and 50% treated (run through a gel water
softener). I never tested GH or KH, assuming they were close (same order of
magnitude) as the river in which they were caught.

BTW, they decimated my 300 tadpoles that I thought would last the summer.

This summer I plan to enlarge the pond, add a bog / veggie filter and
increase the amount of marginal planting.

I may even winter the pond this year, but last fall I took it down because
of laziness of not wanting to bother with keeping it open in our frequently
extreme winters.

----- Original Message -----
From: "R. W. Wolff" <choupiqu_at_wctc.net>
To: <nanfa_at_aquaria.net>
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2002 1:41 AM
Subject: NANFA-- more sunfish spawning [long]

> In my last report I relayed how the one 75 gallon that had a warmouth, a
> pair of Mississippi valley strain dollar sunfish and a trio of redspotted
> sunfish had some action going on. Well, the dollar pair have another group
> of wigglers. The fry from the last batch have all ended up fish food for
the
> other suns. I should have siphoned some off to raise, but time just flies
> by. Anyways, I know with this pair I have more than a second chance ( plus
I
> have a half dozen quarter size young from the pond they were in this past
> year coming along). The redspotteds spawned once again, and once again
the
> male ate his eggs. If he doesn't want to find out what the inside of a an
> Alligator gars stomach looks like , he better straighten up. Seriously, I
> think he is just nervous with all the activity. Maybe another chance with
> them too? If nothing the garden ponds will be more conducive to a
> successful spawn.
>
> In a thirty gallon which holds a spotfin shiner, a pair of golden shiners,
a
> mimic shiner, and four banded sunfish also has some activity. One of the
> male bandeds has a nest made. The shiners are just for eating duckweed
and
> algae. They do well so they get to stay ( though my bowfin pair would like
> them to stop by for supper). I don't know if any of the other three
bandeds
> are females, since they are all very large and old and its hard to sex
this
> particular group. I hope so, I had a spawn of these last year with some
> different smaller ones, that ended up probably being lunch for daddy
banded.
>
> My bantam pair that share a tank with a mudsunfish and some brassy minnows
> are seeming to show some spawning activity. The male seems to have a nest
> hidden down in some driftwood root gnarl. The female though is not showing
> any ripeness. I hope they do something this winter. They spawn often all
> season outdoors ( the rest of their colony is still out in the gar pond)
but
> I have not yet found any young. Don't know what the problem is, since the
> bluespotteds did the same ( although I did not see it) because there are
> alot of young of them.
>
> All conditions are the same as before, 14 hours of artificial day light,
and
> a few hours earlier of natural filtered daylight, temps in the mid 70's, a
> diet of mostly frozen shrimp the past week and a half, and the tanks are
all
> set up roughly the same. They both have power filters on a " low setting"
> ( aka plugged with moss) , driftwood chunks filling half of the space,
java
> moss covering the wood, and assorted other plants either floating or
sitting
> in the moss, like java fern, coontail, water sprite and the like. It's
> nothing really special, and I think anyone interested could easily
duplicate
> what I am doing.
>
> Ray
>
>
>
>
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/----------------------------------------------------------------------------- /"Unless stated otherwise, comments made on this list do not necessarily / reflect the beliefs or goals of the North American Native Fishes / Association" / This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes Association / nanfa_at_aquaria.net. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get help, send the word / subscribe, unsubscribe, or help in the body (not subject) of an email to / nanfa-request_at_aquaria.net. For a digest version, send the command to / nanfa-digest-request_at_aquaria.net instead. / For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org