Native Fish as Aquarium Pets

[livinisfishin]

I have always been a fan of aquarium fish, it wasnt until a couple years ago I decided to keep a couple minnows i pulled out of the lake in my trap , that i realized my love for native species at home. Anybody else have the same passion i do?

[Rizzo]

I've had some minnows in a bucket for a couple of weeks now, keep them alive by adding snow, letting it melt and then starting all over when the bucket gets too full. Tried to feed them corn flakes but not sure it worked...but hey, as long as they stay alive until this saturday's derby! This is probably not the answer you were looking for, but its all I got.

[Rich]

I used to keep a small kiddy pool in the back during the summer as my fish pond. lol

 

In it I had bullheads, rock bass, sunfish, largemouth, gobies and perch at different times.

 

The best survivors were bullheads but as fall neared they for some reason died, full of worms. I have to say the most entertaining with rock bass though. I was absolutely astounded by how well they could hide, in the most unlikely places. Sunfish were rather boring, they just schooled and circled the middle of the pond until I fed them. Gobies died almost instantly. The perch got attacked by a raccoon and the largemouth was really sluggish, but was entertaining to watch him feed. I ended up releasing him in the fall back to where he came from.

[johnnyb]

I've had some minnows in a bucket for a couple of weeks now, keep them alive by adding snow, letting it melt and then starting all over when the bucket gets too full. Tried to feed them corn flakes but not sure it worked...but hey, as long as they stay alive until this saturday's derby! This is probably not the answer you were looking for, but its all I got.

 

Ice cubes are a great and easy solution too! I wonder what the longest someone has kept minnows alive without an aerator is....

[bassmastermike]

I Have a 125 Gallon and a was hoping i could put a pike yearling and watch it grow not sure where i could find on tho

[Anatz]

Isn't it illegal to take fish from the lake and keep them as pets and also the part where you put them back in the lake? I think I read it somewhere where you cannot transport live fish unless they are bait fishes.

[Chuck Best]

While catching minnow in his trap, a friend of mine caught 3 tiger muskies,about 2 inches long and he had a 125 gallon tank.....He raised them tll almost a foot long.1 died from the ick,and after 1 jumped out of the tank in the middle of the night ,he realeased the last one back to the Holland River from which they came.....He fed them left over minnows from ice fishing,and gold fish when they got bigger......Very cool to watch them feed on the gold fish.......TC and tight lines all.......Chuck......

[Fang]

Its been about 8 years since I shut down my tanks but I used to have sunfish, rock bass, bluegill, crappie, smallmouth, ....

 

Smallies are extremely hardy and do well up to about 5-6" in length. After that they get territorial and I had 2 in a 50G tank and it was getting too small. Lots of splashing around and banging inot the glass

 

From my experience you need to keep the tanks extra clean and ammonia levels on the low side. Use a filter that has a charcoal bag. Best to put only 1 primary fish in the tank like a bass or pike. If you go with panfish you can keep a few together kind of like a school of cichilds. I had about a dozen at one time, mixed bag of small bluegill, crappie and sunfish.

 

Keep the number of fish on the low side and add lots of plants and cover and they'll do fine.

[Rich]

Isn't it illegal to take fish from the lake and keep them as pets and also the part where you put them back in the lake? I think I read it somewhere where you cannot transport live fish unless they are bait fishes.

 

It's legal. It counts towards your daily possession limit of that species. As long as you aren't transporting them from fisheries management zones to different FMZ's, and as long as you aren't releasing them in a different body of water from which they came.

[Fisherman]

It's legal. It counts towards your daily possession limit of that species. As long as you aren't transporting them from fisheries management zones to different FMZ's, and as long as you aren't releasing them in a different body of water from which they came.

Rich, you are now a candidate for re reading "General Prohibitions" in short..It is illegal to transport live fish, other than baitfish, taken from

Ontario waters or to transfer or stock any fish into Ontario’s waters

without a special licence to transport or stock fish. It is NOT legal.

[ch312]

i had a rock bass in a 50 gallon until he was 8 or 10" long i think. sure are cool to watch and it taught me what presentation rock bass favour. i released it in its home waters as it was too hard keeping the water clean even with 2 filters. i think i just fed it too much lol

[The Urban Fisherman]

It used to be a hobby of mine - back before, and a little while during college I kept a number of native species.

 

Speks did well as long as the aquarium was in the basement and the water stayed on the cooler side. They loved cichlid pellets.

 

Sunfish and Rockbass also did very well and were cool to see schooling around the tank.

 

Bullheads and Baby Carp were hard core bottom feeders, thus keeping the bottom of the tank tidy...especially the carp,

you could see the sand getting sucked up in their mouths, they'd filter out the dirt swallowing it and the leftover clean

sand flew out their gills...cool to watch.

 

One favourite of mine was creek skulpins I got from manitoulin isl. Cool lookin' fish!

 

And for a while I had two Smallies, but as Fang said once they hit about 6 inches they get to be pretty vicious. They grew

up from about a half inch or so and lived peacefully with my african cichlids, then one day my cichlids started disappearing???

After Berkley and Fenwick (smallies) ate about $60.00 worth of them I released them back into the Thames where they came from, and that

ended my hobby of keeping native fish.

 

Haven't had a tank for a few years now but I'd like to get back into it when I have time..and money for the right setup!

 

Cheers,

UF

[The Urban Fisherman]

oh yeah, and don't bother with perch whatever you do...for some reason they don't do well in aquariums...not for me anyways

[blizzcat]

my boyfriend tried to keep a brook trout, he chopped up worms and everything but it only lived about 2 months in the tank. it was sad but he knows now not to try it again at least

[KyleM]

Illegal? Yes.

 

Does anyone care and does it really matter? No

[Bernie]

As a kid my father sold live bait so I was always on the lookout for different species to drop in my aquarium. Had a vast array over time. The local CO also lived in my Dads apartment for a few years. I think he was more interested in the stuff I had than I was. The mudpuppy lived the longest of anything. Of course as a kid I knew nothing of ph levels and such so nothing survived overly long. Dace, chub and catfish would live the longest. A few sportfish found there way in from time to time too. We had a brook trout in one of the in ground tanks that lived for about ten years. His demise was a mink that came along one day.

[Terry]

well it is not illegal from what I read to have live fish, but the transporting of live fish is illegal.....

 

and it does state some where that if you have sport fish in your aquarium, they count against your daily limit ..

 

so I guess it's how you define "transport"..if I walk them up from the creek at the back of my house am I transporting them..

plus I hear the BPS gets a permit to transport their sport fish for their aquarium

so assuming everyone here did the same..I don't see a problem...

[livinisfishin]

well i have 1 largemouth and 1 sunfish in 38 gallon tank. They are 2-3 inches long and they are doing great in there. Im looking forward to getting a new tank when i move out that can hold100-150 gallons or more if i find the right deal. I am also able to keep two small algae eaters in the tank. With the plants and the fish it looks real cool. Also the other week i had a minnow bucket with 7 minnows in it. The next couple days the weather got really cold, and froze the poor minnows into an icecube. It stayed in my car frozed solid for four days or mroe, then the one day i pulled it out and the water was defrosted and had lost some of in my car cause the bucket ended up titled over i looked at the water that was left and there was 4 dead minnows, i looked closer and there were 3 still swimming around alive . Im wondering how thsi happened, ive heard of reptiles like frogs freezing ,defrosting and coming back to life, kinda like s state of hibernation. did this type of thing happen to my minnows or was there an air hold just big enough for my fish to stay alive in. From my experience the whole bucket freezes, no water is spared, its just like a giant icecube. Can somebody help explain how they lived?

[fishinggeek]

I'll bet no one here had a permit to transport the fish!

[Terry]

I bet some people here have got the permit and they took the fish with a permit to BPS and that's how I know about it, they had a thread about it some time ago

it always gets me how most people on these boards assume everyone is guilty..oh well I guess that's life

[fishinggeek]

That sounds reasonable. But a permit to transport fish to their backyard kiddie pool or basement aquarium? That doesn't sound reasonable. I could be wrong though.

 

In any event, I'm just making useless banter. Never done it myself, but would've been cool to see a smallie eat a ciclid (sp).

Edited February 20, 2008 by fishinggeek

[kingjames_2nd]

While trapping minnows I caught 1 rock bass and 2 sun fish, all about 1 inch long. I put them in a fish bowl with an aerator and watched them jump out a coupe times. so I place a lid on it and I could hear them clang against it trying to jump to freedom. I let them go the next day feeling bad for them and dont plan to keep any more as pets... except maybe a large school of bait fish.

 

On a larger scale it is my dream to buy some land excavate a pond and stock it with X species. Then we'll really have some pets to play with.

[Terry]

you might be right, but I think they are more interested in the fact that you are not putting them into another lake

but a back yard swimming pool might be a pond in under the law and that needs another permit

[fishinggeek]

So Rich now needs 2 permits????

[EC1]

i used to have a smallmouth in my tank, it grew for a while...we fed it shrimp and nearing the time before it died we got it to jump out of the water and grab it out of our hands. fun times. but then i guess these fish werent meant for aquariums....