NANFA-- more sunfish spawning [long]

R. W. Wolff (choupiqu_at_wctc.net)
Fri, 8 Feb 2002 00:41:32 -0600

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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