> Thanks for all your responses folks. I like the idea of gathering other
> live foods during the warmer months. In the ditches around here, I can
> gather quite a bit of food by swinging around a fine mesh dipnet. And
heck,
> I'm already there. I think live earthworms will work too, hadn't
considered
> that until this morning. I think Sprwal-Mart has "leaf-worms" for sale
all
> year round in one of those refrigerated vending machines. I'll have to
> check that out.
>
> If there's any temp I should be worried about, it seems it's the sculpins
> and not their food. The fish I've brought in were taken from 33 F water
(it
> was literally freezing as we went) and have stayed well below 70 F their
> entire stay here. I'm interested to see if they can't be stabilized prior
> to the summer warm up and deal just fine with the 76 F that the systems
went
> to last summer. If that's the case, then I guess late fall collecting is
> the best time to bother with them. I think it's pretty obvious that
summer
> collecting is pretty much asking for failure. I've had them just die
right
> in my hand as I was pulling them out of the seine in the summer... Ooops.
> Nice conservation work there monkey boy. :)
>
> With the small tanks, I think it will be obtainable to drop in ice cubes
in
> some sort of container to keep the edge off if they get into trouble.
That
> will definately have to be played with tho... It'd be really easy to swing
> the temp down, then swing it back up while I was sleeping or something.
And
> that can't be good either.
>
> Anyway.. Thanks for the thoughts!
> Todd
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Michael Wolfe" <mwolfe_at_mindspring.com>
> To: <nanfa_at_aquaria.net>
> Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2004 7:50 AM
> Subject: RE: NANFA-- Guppies as sculpin food
>
>
> > Todd, Since others are answering the sculpin question much better than I
> > could I will add some info to the guppy question. Guppies can survive
> very
> > well in much cooler temps! I had a similar idea (to use guppies as food
> > for my pickerel... I mean hey... the look like gambusia!). Being in
> > Georgia, I kept the guppies in plastic trash cans outside (35 gallons...
> > deep enough for them to get away from the heat here in GA). During the
> > spring and summer they thrived and reproduced like crazy. But even in
the
> > fall they were going strong when the temps were down in the 50s and even
> > 40s. Only problem I had was a snap freeze that killed on of the
> containers
> > (I had two at the time). THe one real close to the house was OK, the
> other
> > farther out and exposed to direct night sky, froze over and that killed
> all
> > the guppies in that trash can... over night.
> >
> > Thinking further about grown and such, you may want to experiment with
> > whether you get acceptable growth and reproduction rates at the low
temps
> > you are considering, but I know for a fact that they will survive the
> temps
> > of a basement. Mine are currently breeding and refilling the trash cans
> > sitting on the basement from here in GA with no heat (but then again my
> > basement never gets to 50 degrees.
> >
> > MWolfe
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