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Since most of my school is Jewish, we got Yom Kippur off. I had nothing to do, I decided to change my newt/salamander tank into a California native fish tank. I let the salamaders go outside near a creek. The tank is roughly 26 gallons.

So far the stocking is:

3 Platies (lived with the salamanders)
4 Mosquitofish (going to get rid of)
10 California Roaches
5 Threespine Sticklebacks
1 Fathead Minnow

I did have my Prickly Sculpin in there, but I banished him to the tropical tank (temporarily) because I caught him eating one of the new minnows. In the tank he was in before, some of my smaller minnows were disappearing (now I know why). The sculpin has such a tiny mouth, I never suspected him...

Anyway, here is a picture of the tank:


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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

That tiny mouth is going to turn into a huge one...pricklies grow big fast.

The driftwood arrangement is very attractive; well done.




Last edited by Cup_of_Lifenoodles at 14-Oct-2005 01:11

The strange thing is that the Sculpin does not appear to be any larger than when I first caught him (despite the fact that he greedily accepts whatever food I put in the tank), but the minnows just started disappearing a couple weeks ago.

Can you think of any other interesting Californian fish that would work in the tank?

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Speckled dace come to mind...

Those guys look awesome. I think I actually saw some on one of my collecting trips, but I didn't try to catch any because I thought they were young trout.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Very Nice :88)

I caught some sort of Cyprinid today, but I cannot identify it.



It's about 3" long. On only thing that I found that looked even moderately like it was the Sacramento Splittail, but that fish doesn't occur around here.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Was this fish caught in the same region? Can you take any pictures of the snout area? I have my own ideas, but I'll reserve my judgement until I see more pictures.

Here is a better picture of the head....




I'm pretty sure it's not some kind of dace... They tend to have more inferior, almost sucker-like mouths, whereas mine just has the typical, terminal Cyprinid mouth.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Was this fish caught in the same region?

Yes. It was caught in the same place I went Thursday, and I saw plenty of them there, but they only seemed to live in deep water (about three feet - these are drying up remnants of a large creek). Today I brought my six-foot landing net, so I was able to catch one (they are fast).

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

At first, it looked to me as if it were a chub of some sort, but it didn't seem like an appropriate locality to catch them, and the fish in question does seem too elongated. If I had to guess, I'd stick with some species of striped chub, but chances are, I'm wrong. It's certainly not out of the realm of plausibility that your fish is merely an adult lavinia.



Last edited by Cup_of_Lifenoodles at 16-Oct-2005 01:10

Adult Lavinia are about 20" long...

It does look like some kind of chub, but I believe the only native chubs here are Thicktail Chubs, and those are extinct. I haven't heard of any introduced chubs around here.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen any non-native fish around here...

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

I was thinking more along the lines of lavina symmetricus, which I recalled you having. I remember reading that hesperoleucus was a misnomer, but whatever.

Ahhh... I thought you were referring to the Hitch, another relatively common Cyprinid in California, which, according to Fishbase, is the only valid species in the genus Lavinia.

Most resources I have been looking at say the California Roach is Hesperoleucus symmetricus. As for that being a positive identification, I agree that is entirely possible. What made me think that they are different species is the large "Roaches" did not interact nor like the same environment as the young ones (the smaller ones forming large schools right near the water's edge), and the shape of the head looks a bit different as well.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Yeah, the snout doesn't have the curvature of the younger roaches.

Indeed, hitch grow huge. There are a few specimens in the Balboa Park pond; damn beautiful, too.