My sunfish

[Kaliska]

Got my orange spotted tank started. The top plants have been thinned since I changed the light from metal halide (got a deal on it and was short a light) to t5s and some of my other plants are starting to fill in. I'm going to cap the sand with eco complete and replant everything plus a different rock structure.






Of course they don't want to sit still sideways so you can see all their colors. I'll have to net one. I'm not sure on all genders yet and I've got a few that may not be orange spots. One is definitely a juvenile female bluegill. 2 others I caught in a minnow trap so they are tiny and just grey colored basic sunfish shaped. I've got them taking flakes but they only eat large pieces and they tear at it so I tend to get a shower of flake pieces everywhere and they have refused every size of pellet. So far they are ignoring the snails in there so I have a cleanup crew. They like beef heart. I just throw in the cubes frozen so they float and are large targets until they've torn them apart. That works the best but expensive since I'm buying the packs of little cubes specifically for pet fish. I need to check the grocery store for beef liver (chicken is too fattening) and slice them up to freeze. Would be much cheaper. They still do best on feeder guppies, ghost shrimp, and I help them eat $1 large crays from the bait store.

 

[tanker]

Nice tank, and nice fishes. I have never kept native fishes before.

 

[rufioman]

Cool fish and setup!!!!

 

[Rbishop]

Nice fish for sure. How many in what size tank?

 

[Kaliska]

Right now I have about 5 adults with one obvious dominant male, 2 young ones, and 1 juvenile bluegill in a 40g breeder. The tank will be culled down as needed but I find the orange spots school pretty well and are not aggressive except maybe when spawning. They will eat anything up to slightly bigger than their mouths and weak fish may be killed. I had 2 get injured when being caught and they were chased off constantly to finally die despite treatment.

 

[Kannan Fodder]

I have a sunfish that really enjoys crickets. It also readily eats shrimp pellets, bottom feeder pellets, bloodworms, brine shrimp, and krill.

 

[Kaliska]

They will eat large flakes that they can tear apart and colored cichlid pellets now. They leave the brown cichlid pellets. They still haven't bothered the snails much and there are 3 baby bn they quit harassing. Had to remove the bluegill because it had surpassed the sunfish in size and was forcing them off all the food which it then gulped down in big chunks. They've been getting waxworms (which sink) and calci-worms aka soldier fly larvae (which float) when I have excess from using as fishing bait.

 

[Kannan Fodder]

I misread... Thought I read they'd only eat large flakes and refused pellets. Suggested crickets because they are cheaper than beef heart cubes and other frozen foods.

I have a couple alligator lizards that I buy crickets and meal worms for, so toss a few into the tank for "Sunshine". Pretty sure it's a green sunfish, but it's in a 180g with 4 voracious tinfoil barbs, so being picky isn't a good option. It started getting picky, but then quickly discovered the tinfoils gladly ate everything.

 

[Kaliska]

They wouldn't eat anything but large frozen and live mealworms or maggots at first. I caught them wild. I've worked them on to eating flakes but they mostly want large pieces to take from my hand so the little bits scatter all over the tank as they tear them up in a group. They learned my fingers mean food which is good and bad. They also like the floating multicolored cichlid pellets that I think are marineland (they have a blue ram on the front) but leave all my others and leave the brown ones out of the multicolored mix. Orange spots are smaller and have a much smaller mouth than a green. Green sunfish have big mouths sort of like a bass and will ingest large things all at once easier. They'll eat about anything right away. I've had some in captivity. I just got rid of my last one. I find them too aggressive (one male made 3 others jump out of a 55 to avoid him) and they take much bigger tanks. The orange spots school a bit and share the 40g quite well. The only ones they picked on were the ones that got injured being caught and ended up dying. Plus that was before the plants started to fill in better.

 

[Kannan Fodder]

Mine was mixed in with a bunch of rosy reds that were shipped as feeders, and I originally thought it was a baby bluegill. It's in a 180g (6' long by 2' wide), and the tinfoils seem to harass it at times. It's staked out a territory on one side of the tank and tries to keep everything else away, but the bichirs don't care about real estate and the tinfoils hang out/travel in a pack.

I have been taking notes on possible fish bait! The first cricket I dropped in produced a strike as soon as it touched the surface - which is fun to watch.