> Tubercles in most NA minnows are generally not maintained well in aquaria-
> well, most of the time. One of the folks in our lab, Bernie Kuhajda,
> suscribes to the "pack em in" philosophy of tank maintenance. In one 20gal
> tank in his office, he has several Cyprinella camura (one a stud male of ca.
> 6"), half a dozen large Pimephales vigilax, half a dozen Notropis chrosomus,
> a few big Cyprinella venusta, some Phoxinus, three large Erimyzon, a large
> Percina kathae, two Percina vigil, and a big Hypostomus. There's barely any
> room for water. Weird thing is, all of the male fish stay in full nuptial
> coloration and tuberculation for months longer than fish in our other tanks
> do, and intensity of coloration is much higher (the testosterone level in
> that tank is almost enough to make a person grow a beard just from walking
> by it)! Amazingly, he has very few casualties, even though the large
> Pimephales and C. camura spend most of the day headbutting each other.
I had a similar experience with Red Shiners (Cyprinella lutrensis). I
"packed" about 150 of them in a 29 gallon tank with high water movement
and air diffusion. About a dozen males colored up quickly and stayed that
way for approx. three months. By that time I had traded off a majority of
the population and their color began to fade. Interestingly enough,
younger males had small amounts of color, but only the largest males went
into their full splendor. (a coloration which I will pit against
practically any other NA species <possibly excluding the Rainbow Shiner>
or the tropicals)
Luke
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