Re: NANFA-- sailfin shiners & welakas

Mysteryman (bestfish_at_alaweb.com)
Thu, 12 Jun 2003 21:07:56 -0700

Don't forget the Apalachee Shiner, Pteronotropis grandipinnis, which
lives near the Chipley/Marianna area in the Appalachicola river, and Pt.
merlini, found in the Pea river of Alabama. Funny how a fish from
Alabama is named after a Grand Wizard, eh? ( think about it... )

Here's what I want to know: which of the Sailfins is the one with the
gorgeous green sides? I think a picture I once saw showed it had red
fins as well. I've never seen a redfin, so I don't know if that was it.
All I know is that I want some of the greensides. The only green fish I
have around here are a darter and a coldwater cave form of Redeye Chub.

Welakas...these guys are pretty common in the yellow river of Santa Rosa
County in Florida, near the city of Milton. Too bad it's too hard to
avoid getting caught while trying to catch them. The Yellow river's
headwaters are near my home, but the fish hasn't been seen in this
county for 49 years.
I seriously wonder sometimes if there is any way I could get a grant to
study my county to see if the Bluenose is still here or not.
There's also a little creek near Marianna that has oodles of 'em, but
you need a canoe to get to their spot. The easiest place to get them is
in Alabama, where they're not protected, and the spot is reputedly even
more productive than that famous honey-hole in Mississippi. I wish the
blasted rain would stop for a couple of weeks so I could go find out! I
watched a tornado zip by my office today!

Breeding? Good luck; you'll need it. It's only been done once,
allegedly. The methods BG employed should have worked, I would have
thought. I guess it's going to take a lot of work & luck.
( Hey, BG, have you tried conditioning the shiners and the sunfishes
separately, and then putting them together only after the sunfishes have
nested and the bluenoses were super-ripe? )

The fish farmer in me knows that he can produce this fish, but the
aquarist in me won't let the farmer cheat! *sigh*
( That fish farmer has some pretty crazy ideas about "improving " the
Sailfin as well, but fortunately he's too broke to bother. )

Fritz Rohde wrote:
>
> Royal Suttkus and Scott Mettee in 2001 publication on the sailfin shiner
> complex (Bulletin Geological Survey Alabama No 170) state that the true
> P. hypselopeterus is a Gulf coastal plain species and occurs from the
> Mobile Bay drainage east to lower Choctawhatchee River and St. Andrews
> Bay drainages. The "sailfin" shiner in southern GA and peninuslar FL
> should be referred to as P. metallicus and the ones on Atlantic coast GA
> and SC should be referred to as P. stonei. But there is no validation
> for this separation except to say that it will be discussed in a
> separate paper.
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