I kept them even cooler by sitting them directly on the bare floor of the
basement in a corner (65 or less). You may want to have a "hot weather
hideaway" set up for them to assure they stay at 70 for optimal health. It
doesn't have to be anything big either... I kept 3 in a 5 gallon. Because of
their benthic, cryptic nature... You can get away with this.
Feeding them, however, becomes a pain in the butt. I never got mine to switch
to prepared foods, and once winter hit, Maumee B&T stopped carrying leaf
worms, and guppies were tough to find (so I had no local option for food
stuff)... We ended up doing an euthenization event because neglect was setting
in. Pehaps having them with other minners will remedy my failure.
But watch it on who you put in there... I think the standing number is
somethign moving and 40% body mass of the sculpin = food :)
...side note. Went to Harpersfield Bridge site on the Grand River with
Michael yesterday to get pictures for his project and look at mussels. I
couldn't even find a broken piece of a weather shell until I walked around the
second bend and another riffle down. No, I take that back... I found one live
pond papershell in a rubble pile. People have picked up every last mussel in
that entire stretch. It was incredible. They must have removed hundreds of
live animals. Hopefully it was the state that relocated them because they
knew this was an annual summer problem.
On the other hand, got to watch northern hogsucker and spotted sucker swimming
around below the falls at Rock Creek Rotary Park. That was plain neato :)
Todd
The Muddy Maumee Madness, Toledo, OH
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
http://www.farmertodd.com
________________________________
From: owner-nanfa-l at nanfa.org on behalf of Jeff Grabarkiewicz
Sent: Tue 9/13/2005 12:09 PM
To: nanfa-l at nanfa.org
Subject: Re: NANFA-L-- Keeping Sculpin
Excellent Mike, thanks for the input. Right now my tanks are at 70, but they
can get up to 75 on those very hot summer days. 65 or less during the colder
months.
I too collect inverts from streams to feed with. In fact I had stocked this
tank with numerous caddisflies, craneflies, mayflies, and snails prior to
putting the fish in.
It seems like everyone has different experiences with sculpin and how
predatory they behave. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds.
Jeff
Lori Austin <providentaustin at yahoo.com> wrote:
Jeff,
A quick word about temp. and sculpins. I continue to maintain a half dozen
redside dace, a half dozen redbelly dace, and one medium mottled sculpin in a
30 long. The temp in my basement has maxed at 78 degrees and all fish seem to
be doing fine. I was certain the sculpin would do poorly once temps got above
70..but nothing happened that I noticed. Now, temps should slowly start coming
down and by January I will see about 67 or so.
I have a tube permanently fixed with a suction cup to one side of the tank
where there is also a sculpin hideout. When I feed ....I get the dace busy
with their food and put the sculpin food down the tube....usually earthworms,
frozen blood worms, and crane fly larvae (collected from local streams). At
the high temps only the redside dace seem to get skinny fast if I don't feed
them every single day.
later (Mike using Lori's computer....)
Jeff Grabarkiewicz wrote:
Thanks for all the advice Bob and Bruce. The sculpin I snagged was a mottled.
They are stationed in my basement so I hope I can keep the water sub 70
degrees. I'm using a 20 gallon long tank with a rather large powerhead (270
gph). It has a very nice riffle feel to it.
Tank mates are timid feeders who are about 1.5 times larger than the sculpin.
I was worried I took a fish that I had no business taking.
Jeff
Bob Bock wrote:
Hi Jeff. I've kept Potomac and/or mottled sculpin. They're both found in a
creek near here, and to tell you the truth, I never bothered to try to tell
the difference between them.
Anyway, those two species like cool water and will probably falter and die if
they get too much above 70 degrees. They love blackworms and can be trained to
frozen offerings like brine shrimp. They are extremely predatory, however, and
will pick off anything they can swallow. They'll try to eat fish that are just
a little too big for them, and I've had some choke to death on fantail
darters.
They aren't good competitors with the larger minnow and shiner species. If
you've got them in a tank with a lot of faster species, you can train them to
accept blackworms from a turkey baster (the Scharpf method). The turkey baster
also may come in handy for making sure the smaller sculpins get enough to eat
when their are larger sculpins around.
I kept mine going for quite awhile on blackworms and rosy red feeder minnows.
It may take awhile for the sculpins to pick off the rosy reds. After the
sculpins become acclimated to their tank, you can train them to accept rosy
reds from a pair of forceps.
Aside from laying on the bottom, sculpins are active and alert fish. A few
sculpins will soon set up discrete little territories when kept in the same
tank They'll quickly learn to recognize the person who feeds them and draw
near when it's feeding time. They'll even follow a fingertip drawn along the
side of the aquarium glass.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Grabarkiewicz
Sent: Sep 12, 2005 7:46 AM
To: nanfa-l at nanfa.org
Subject: NANFA-L-- Keeping Sculpin
Hey y'all- looking for a little advice on how to keep sculpin. Obviously, they
are somewhat sedentary benthic fish that thrive in higher gradient coldwater
streams. In captivity however, what is the best thing to feed them? Are they a
"good" aquarium fish?
Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort.
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association (NANFA). Comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of NANFA. For more information about NANFA,
/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
/ http://www.nanfa.org/guidelines.shtml To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get
/ help, visit the NANFA email list home page and archive at
/ http://www.nanfa.org/email.shtml
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association (NANFA). Comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of NANFA. For more information about NANFA,
/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
/ http://www.nanfa.org/guidelines.shtml To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get
/ help, visit the NANFA email list home page and archive at
/ http://www.nanfa.org/email.shtml
http://mail.yahoo.com
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association (NANFA). Comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of NANFA. For more information about NANFA,
/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
/ http://www.nanfa.org/guidelines.shtml To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get
/ help, visit the NANFA email list home page and archive at
/ http://www.nanfa.org/email.shtml
http://mail.yahoo.com
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association (NANFA). Comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of NANFA. For more information about NANFA,
/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
/ http://www.nanfa.org/guidelines.shtml To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get
/ help, visit the NANFA email list home page and archive at
/ http://www.nanfa.org/email.shtml
http://mail.yahoo.com
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association (NANFA). Comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of NANFA. For more information about NANFA,
/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
/ http://www.nanfa.org/guidelines.shtml To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get
/ help, visit the NANFA email list home page and archive at
/ http://www.nanfa.org/email.shtml
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------
/ This is the discussion list of the North American Native Fishes
/ Association (NANFA). Comments made on this list do not necessarily
/ reflect the beliefs or goals of NANFA. For more information about NANFA,
/ visit http://www.nanfa.org Please make sure all posts to nanfa-l are
/ consistent with the guidelines as per
/ http://www.nanfa.org/guidelines.shtml To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get
/ help, visit the NANFA email list home page and archive at
/ http://www.nanfa.org/email.shtml