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I've turned the 40g long into a native fish tank with native limestone rocks and sand. I went collecting today and got 2 baby green sunfish that are only about 1" long, 7 bluntnose minnows(Pimephales notatus), and a mosquito fish hitchhiked along with my minnow school. Took me awhile to id that mosquito fish. I didn't know they could survive in Iowa but after sorting through several lists of native and nonnative fish that's definitely what it is. I suppose I'm stuck with just 1 mosquito fish since it's nonnative and I both don't want to put it back in the stream or add anymore to the tank. The bluntnose minnows are already their normal color and schooling in front of the filter outlet. The sunfish are quite contentedly exploring their tank and picking at anything they can find that might be edible. Hopefully given their slight difference in body shape I have 1 male and 1 female so I don't have to go find anymore.

Unfortunately I abandoned the digital camera at Chris' apartment since the argument wasn't worth it. I'll have to borrow my mom's camera tomorrow.

Cool sham! I thought about that once.......that it would be kind of a cool idea to have a tank like that. I mentioned it to someone & they gave me a site about native fish. I'll put it below in case someone might want to look at it. I wish you luck with that. Are you going to try to match your water to the stream water you found them in, or will they just adjust to your water?

nativefish

In a 40 gal I think that may end up being to small for sunfish.

Djrichie
"So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish" Douglas Adams

That is really neat Sham. Someday, when I learn more and get better at all this, I would like to do a native fish aquarium as well. I am anxious to see the photos and also curious to know about how you got/get your water parameters set up to match those of the stream.

Keep us updated!

(and thanks for your advice on my various questions!)

My water is only slightly harder than the stream so I collected rainwater from the past 2 storms(got a total of 5" here) and mixed around 25% rainwater with 75% wellwater. I may just go ahead and switch them over to 100% wellwater over the next month since they shouldn't mind the harder water.

A 40g is fine for the sunfish since greens only get 3-5". I had a couple in my 20g long for awhile. It's those minnows that are actually gonna be pushing it. They each get around 3". A rather large schooling fish but they will take a year to grow so I have time to decide if I want to reseal the 90g and use it instead or I could move them to the 55g. There's options. If I did the 90g though I'd rather go with redear sunfish which are twice as big and more colorful. The minnows are interesting enough to keep and spawn in their own tank. They are more like dealing with cichlids than most cyprinids and will gaurd their clutch of eggs and fry laid under the edge of rocks or in other hidden places.

If you put green sunfish into the search area on the nanfa site, which fish patty already linked to, there's a really good article on keeping and spawning green sunfish. I also use http://www.iowadnr.com/fish/iafish/iafish.html for info and identifying minnows found in this state.

I managed to get a few pictures but the fish are so small and fast moving I didn't have much luck with close up shots. The tank also has some scratches on the glass that interfered but it was a free tank so can't complain too much.

Here is the full tank:


With the little school of minnows in the top and I temporarily added some golden clam shells. The minnows didn't like going out on the smooth sand since the stream they were from had various debris and boulders all across it. When they get bigger they will probably enjoy open swimming areas but for now they needed something to hide amongst to coax them out from the rocks.

This is the only picture I managed to get of the sunfish that wasn't just a blur. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v244/aqh88/fish/40g/DSC00464.jpg Hard to imagine all these tiny fish are going to get big enough to nearly overstock that tank.

Thanks for the update, that is going to be fun to watch as they grow and change...