First oops...

[FlyAnglerFishKeeper]

I told myself I knew what I was doing. LOL

Last night I acquired three tiny pumpkinseed bream for my native aquarium. They were naturally a little freaked out by the experience, even though we tried to explain to them that they would no longer have to fear being eaten by a bass. Apparently, pumpkinseed bream do not speak English.

After a few minutes in the tank, Dr. Sheldon Cooper found some rocks and fake plants to his liking and settled in, but the other two - Raj and Leonard, continued to swim along the tank wall. My smarter-than-I-will-ever-be wife said "Why don't we turn the blue light on for them - maybe they will think it's night-time." I was like "Oh yeah, that's really going to help..." but I said "ok. do it."

Within five minutes all three were resting peacefully, as bream will do apparently, on the bottom of the tank. Each one staked out a little rock-pile to hide in over night. One of them got in it and hardly moved for two hours.

Then, the storms came. Now, I'm not sure if all fish do this or not - I'm guessing the ones bred for aquariums wouldn't - but I got up to check our extra freezer during the storm to make sure the breaker hadn't tripped and shut off the freezer and I thought - I'll check on the guys, too.

All three of them were side-by-side, huddled up in one bare(except for the gravel) corner of the aquarium. The thunder was unreal and I'm sure the barometric pressure change was pretty steep. I knew it affected fish(and fishing), but I didn't know they'd all huddle up together. That was quite the surprise for this old fisherman.

So on one hand, I'm learning stuff about one of my favorite fish already. On the other hand, I'm learning stuff about how fast flake food can dump out of a sample packet.

I'm off to the store for some mystery snails and a suction hose thing to clean my gravel before I get a spike.

Anyway, like you guys want pics of some plain old bream....I'm going to post them anyway later this afternoon.

PS - they tried the flakes, and promptly turned up their little green and blue noses at them. I'm also going to pick up a few crickets. Would those be cheaper at the bait shop than the LFS? ( I'm assuming that stands for "local fish store")

 

[FlyAnglerFishKeeper]

So a little pre-trip research and I'm reading that the snails themselves will produce alot of waste (which makes sense I guess) and something about them escaping the tank. I really don't want something that's going to be a pain. I was originally thinking I'd keep a crawfish in there with the bream - make him big enough so they wouldn't snack on him, but as they apparently sleep on the bottom, I can see that going the other way around! LOL

So is there any other option for something to clean up excess food? I guess some kind of bottom sucking fish then? Might have to trade out a bream though since the tank would be kinda full with four fish I'm thinking?

 

[sally pu]

you could try a healthy population of shrimp but they may get eaten by the bream.

 

[FlyAnglerFishKeeper]

Thanks, I'll do some research on those - but you're probably right - they are pretty voracious and will eat any live thing they can get in their mouths. In the fishing world we have a saying that goes " If bream grew to five pounds, you couldn't let your kids swim in the lake." But it's part of what I love about 'em, too...

 

[techo]

I like your natural tank idea, what size tank do you have? Could you possibly try a large pleco?

 

[FlyAnglerFishKeeper]

It's only a 20 gal, so I'm very limited in the number of fish I can hold. I'd like something larger, but money and space won't permit that right now. Mostly the money part.

I was thinking I might have to go with a Pleco, plecko, whatever you call 'em. I don't think they'd bother one of those too much....