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I was looking to acquire some white sturgeons, does anyone know whether it is ok to have 125 gal. aquarium for one.

No. White sturgeon can reach a length of 20' and weight as much as 1,500 pounds.

Here's a link that will give you some general information about them.

http://www.psmfc.org/habitat/edu_wsturg_fact.html

Even if you acquired them at a very young age it is really not a fish appropriate for a home aquarium.

And by the way welcome to FP.

Jim

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Water, taken in moderation, cannot hurt anybody. -- Mark Twain

i dont know if you had just seen a pic or saw them being sold but there an endangered fish, as with most sturgeons.
http://www.fws.gov/Endangered/features/sturgeon/index.html

I've seen these at public aquariums. You'd have to setup a tank in the range of 500g just as a start. They are monster fish and looked like they could eat me. Possibly for a fancy pond setup but the logistics of setting up something out of glass or acrylic for them would be near impossible for most people. Maybe if you were that person who was converting a swimming pool into a giant fish tank/pond or the guy who built 1 large tank into the walls of his basement.... Otherwise probably not.

20' thats insane.
i think a nice alternative to one of these might be a great white or a crocadile, or a small whale, possibly even a large guppy.

Renegade545,
king of the frontosa

how about 1,000,000,000 neon tetras... that equals about the same

yea sterlets need a massive tank, really arent suitable for any tanks.

ponds only, 15,000 gallons maybe the min.

The sale of any species of sturgeon, even smaller species at anything from 6 -12 feet is crazy. 20 foot monsters are very possible, and I have personally seen the kind of sturgeons caviar is extracted from on sale on the open market for the fish trade. Even ponds are unsuitable for these species, as they are naturally dwellers in great lakes and rivers, and some change internally, first to brackish and some onto fully marine. Good luck anticipating that particular biological change! High temperatures are also problematic for their immune system. Dont forget, a lot of these animals originate from truly cold, often near freezing waters, and even the seasonal highs, of wet, cold, and grey old blighty can kill them off. They attract fungus and bacterial sores like magnets when the temps are too warm for them. Most will die of disease way before reaching any great age. Nobody can afford cooling systems for a fish this size, and that means water depth has to be really quite vast. In small ponds they typically grow until in the close confines they die from abrasion, or get trapped and choked by blanketweed. In koi ponds, panicked sturgeons have been known to thrash about and pulp their pondmates, and have thrown themselves clear of the water. Can you imagine trying to pick up an place a fish, covered in recurved armoured hooklike scales, and studs, that is probably stronger than you, and very likely to thrash vigourously, back into the water? Id rather pick up a 10 foot alligator. It actually would be easier. A sturgeon, quite simply, could put you into an intensive care unit.

Any captive care for a sturgeon will eventually be truly abusive unless one happens to own a lake or a loch,or perhaps the kind of aquarium youd see a shoal of sand tiger sharks swimming about in. Even then for many species that will not be sufficient as they require access to the sea.

Any captive sturgeon will suffer and endure a lingering premature death. In no way should these be legally available for the pet trade in any country, and certainly not for the home aquarist. Even public aquaria capable of looking after them for their great lifespan are few and far between, I can for example, think of perhaps two in the entirety of the united kingdom that would be suitable.

Therefore any sturgeon sold is sold into suffering, and the trade in them should be completely ,utterly, finally, and permanently illegal.

Nobody has any business keeping these animals ,the trade is them is an extreme case of exploitation, misinformation and profiteering on animal suffering the scale of which shouldnt be tolerated for an instant. Certainly no private keeper should have any dealings with these species, and the shops that stock them are morally reprehensible in the extreme.

This is a trade that has to stop. People who buy them have absolutely no idea of what they are getting into. Nor should they under even the most complete illusion believe they can care for an adult adequately. Captive sturgeons will not make one tenth of their potential lifespan, and anyone who knows the species well enough to care for one, should know that they cant look after one, unless they happen to be a millionairre, and perhaps not even then.

Sturgeons in captivity is plain disgusting. It shouldnt be tolerated. I vote for a complete ban across the board. Not in the wildest dreams of the most ambitious keeper, should the general public, who , lets face it, struggle with the responsibilities of goldfish, budgies and hamsters, be let anywhere near a creature that requires such learning, massive funds and a supreme level of responsibility to look after.

Not ever. Zookeepers , professional researchers, and caviar farmers need only apply. Lake required. If you dont have a lake, with suitably cool year round temperatures at the correct elevation, or a multi million pound facility you just wont cope. Dont do it. Even the aquarium at bristol zoo is too small for the two moderate sized specimens they have, both being around the 2 metre mark, they both have snout damage, and a limited quality of life, and that really puts it in perspective. This aquarium is about 8 feet high, 25 feet long, and 8 feet wide. Its too small.

Spectacular and interesting fish though the sturgeon family are , they are totally beyond all but one or two aquarists in millions. If you disregard the weight of the mekong giant catfish, the sturgeon is the largest freshwater fish in the world, often beating the arapaima for average sizes. Even the smaller species are positively enormous by most aquarists standards. Is anyone out there really ready for a benthopelagic fish of over two metres? I think not. Its one thing to read their size out of a book, but when youve actually seen the real thing swimming at cruising speed you realise fairly quickly that even a 2 metre sterlet should get water stretching perhaps a minimum of 40 feet in every direction, and a minimum depth of around 9 feet to prevent too much in the way of warm temperatures. Incidentally thats only its care for the first 20 years or so, these fish get to ages in excess of 70-100 years. You'd have to bequeath it to your children or grandchildren.


Bottom line is, someone who buys a sturgeon by definition must not mind if it suffers and dies, and such people should never be allowed anywhere near animals. Once informed about how they live, grow, and what they need to survive, no-one sane continues on to actually purchase one. Most sturgeon keepers are at best , utterly naive.

even after everything is said and done with all the valuable info and advice just given, green and white sturgeon are illegal to posess (in live,captive form)unless you obtain a special permit for scientific study, most if not all sturgeon you might see in a public aquarium do get returned to a suitable habitat, you want a sturgeon get a fishing liscense, go catch one, oh btw, keep your hand away from the mouth, they do eat freshwater clams.... your hand is softer than that clam shell they shatter !! HAPPY FISHING ! hehe

I'd dispute sturgeon getting released back to the wild with any kind of regularity. In captive settings its too easy for them to pick up mycobacteriosis, viruses, and hexamita from community contact, and from that point of view, they may have undetectable diseases that last for years without symptoms, some of which are untreatable, and could significantly damage entire populations of wild fish. Most of these infections are diagnosed from liver biopsy on dead fish. Its not really possible to vet them for suitability for release and licenses would only be granted for those raised in appropriate conditions free of cross species contamination for the specific purpose of release.


Then you have a species this large requiring accomodation for travel, and basically that requires a container truck for a single fish, and most likely that would have to be flown for time sake. Its not economical to return sturgeons to the wild once they have left their indigenous environment. Zoo's wont be returning sturgeons, especially ones rescued from private owners or the pet trade back to the wild. Why spend the money on releasing a single specimen, when you could pen breed a whole generation locally in the right environment for the same money?

Trust me no-one is releasing previous pet specimens into the wild, although some captive breeding will go on both commercially and for conservation, but this will happen local to the type locality and indigenous environment of the fish. From a conservation point of view, most species will be helped with economy firmly in mind, and that means a locale effort, and fishery regulation on taking wild specimens and quotas on caviar harvests.


Once a pet, a pet it stays until its premature death, and that is partially why keeping them is so shaming. Wild releases for conservation in freshwater fish are rare across the board, few are done legally and almost nver outside of a previously controlled effort. Ex-pet fish do not make it back to the wild outside of illegal releases, nor should they. You could kill an entire regional species by doing that.

Most public aquaria do not release a lot of specimens to the wild, its a myth.Only a tiny, tiny percentage of specimens ever make it to the wild. Often with endangered species, a lot of genetic lines are kept captively as reserves, very few populations are ever brought to fruition, and in almost every zoo you'll ver see the massive priority lies with the mammals, even then, only a small proportion of them get released because the domestic life completely ruins their instincts. Old animals dont go for release. Display animals dont go for release. Thats zoo tycoon stuff, it almost never happens in real life.

Breeding efforts for release are specific efforts, and older animals only go back if they were wild caught, and born and rised to adulthood in nature, rescues going through rehabilitation, or captive for a very short space of time indeed.

A fish raised in aquaria to true adulthood are almost never suitable for release, the wild would kill them.They go young, or not at all. Sturgeon are a migratory fish, an aquarium raised one has to be placed into a suitable river when still tiny so that it knows where to return to spawn. A long term captive could never do that. Its release would be useless, and never having gone through maturation in the wild, its general survival instincts would be useless too. Odds on, something would eat it, or it would starve anyway.

Just in case anyone was taken in by fish supplier BS, heres a list of species with probable adult sizes.

acipenser baeri / 2 metres
acipenser gueldenstaedti / 4 metres
acipenser medirstris / 2 metres
acipenser nudiventris / 2 metres
acipenser ruthenus / 1 metre
acipenser stellatus / 2 metres
acipenser sturio / 6 metres
huso dauricus / 5.5 metres
huso huso / 9 metres
pseudoscaphirhynchus kaufmanni / 75cm
scaphirhynchus platorhynchus / 1.5 metres

So as you can see, given the incessant swimming they do, even the smallest two species need 5000 gal plus, and the big ones, well, they need lakes basically.