Hello everyone,

I am currently finding out what sort of hoops I have to jump through to have a bluegill, and want to make sure I get this started right once all my legal Ts are crossed!
The tank is 60 gallons, and has been an established tank for 4-5 years (will be empty of fish when the bluegill goes in). I've read about keeping bluegills in a school, and keeping them single, and if it's okay for the fish, I think I'd like to keep just one and avoid the potential for drama.
1. Water - someone told me to use "the softest water you can". As long as I don't have HARD water, which we don't, is dechlorinated tap water alright? That's what my other tanks use. If they need actually softened water, would that be accomplished with a Brita filter or something similar?
2. What is a bluegill's adult size? And what is their lifespan in captivity, usually?
3. I know they eat worms, crickets, snails and that sort of thing - how often should they be fed, and how much? Really anxious not to overfeed!
4. Tank arrangement - places to hide, wide-open swimming space, some of both?
5. Planning to put in a lot of plants to make it as natural a setting as possible- are bluegills the sort to tear them up, like goldfish do, or will this plan succeed? No point in investing in live plants if I'll be constantly re-rooting them.
I'm so glad to have found this forum! Thanks for any and all advice you can give a beginner! I've been keeping fish in general for about ten years now, tropicals and goldfish only, and I'm looking forward to having an "Illinois tank"!

Thanks,
Cecily

Hello everyone,

I am currently finding out what sort of hoops I have to jump through to have a bluegill, and want to make sure I get this started right once all my legal Ts are crossed!
The tank is 60 gallons, and has been an established tank for 4-5 years (will be empty of fish when the bluegill goes in). I've read about keeping bluegills in a school, and keeping them single, and if it's okay for the fish, I think I'd like to keep just one and avoid the potential for drama.
1. Water - someone told me to use "the softest water you can". As long as I don't have HARD water, which we don't, is dechlorinated tap water alright? That's what my other tanks use. If they need actually softened water, would that be accomplished with a Brita filter or something similar?
2. What is a bluegill's adult size? And what is their lifespan in captivity, usually?
3. I know they eat worms, crickets, snails and that sort of thing - how often should they be fed, and how much? Really anxious not to overfeed!
4. Tank arrangement - places to hide, wide-open swimming space, some of both?
5. Planning to put in a lot of plants to make it as natural a setting as possible- are bluegills the sort to tear them up, like goldfish do, or will this plan succeed? No point in investing in live plants if I'll be constantly re-rooting them.
I'm so glad to have found this forum! Thanks for any and all advice you can give a beginner! I've been keeping fish in general for about ten years now, tropicals and goldfish only, and I'm looking forward to having an "Illinois tank"!

Thanks,
Cecily

welcome to the forum....its safe to say bluegill can prob withstand anything in the world. i googled max size for you and got 16". Avg lifespan is 5over 9 years. any reason to "start out with a bluegill"? there are some other species that may suit you as well. i just didn't know if you had a certain liking to bluegill. you can feed them all the things you listed....you probably should add some live fish in there to supplement that. bluegill are not a shy fish when they are older so hiding places shouldnt be that big of a deal. maybe some driftwood here or there. i will suggest becoming a NANFA member and check out the trading dock. you maybe able to get more variety of fish that could interest you. theres alot to learn here!!

I have aged wild sunfish and found bluegill that were as old as 8 or 9 years old. Many fish can often live longer in captivity because they do not have to deal with predators, hunting for food, or adverse weather conditions. I would not be surprised if some bluegille could live 15 years or more in captivity.

Edited by bumpylemon, 06 July 2010 - 06:06 PM.

any reason to "start out with a bluegill"? there are some other species that may suit you as well. i just didn't know if you had a certain liking to bluegill.

Mostly because my brother, who gave me the idea of starting a native tank, said that bluegill were what he saw the most when he goes fishing, and a friend of his has one in a tank. No particular reason other than knowing they're easy to find and catch! And it looks like in IL, if the fish is caught in a legal fishing place, by someone with a fishing license, and the person keeping the fish has a license, it's legal, so basically the plan is that I'm going to spend the next month revamping my tank and he's going to net me a fish!
And if one can reach over a foot in length, I'm definitely sticking with one. I can't go any bigger than 60 gallons, and of course the whole point would be to provide the really good care and conditions to let it "live long and prosper". It just occurred to me, I have a guppy tank and if breeding goes well, will have more fry than I want to keep - hello, free feeders!
And you're having better luck getting info from Google than I was - I couldn't find specifics, which is why I'm here. Thanks a bunch!

Mostly because my brother, who gave me the idea of starting a native tank, said that bluegill were what he saw the most when he goes fishing, and a friend of his has one in a tank. No particular reason other than knowing they're easy to find and catch! And it looks like in IL, if the fish is caught in a legal fishing place, by someone with a fishing license, and the person keeping the fish has a license, it's legal, so basically the plan is that I'm going to spend the next month revamping my tank and he's going to net me a fish!
And if one can reach over a foot in length, I'm definitely sticking with one. I can't go any bigger than 60 gallons, and of course the whole point would be to provide the really good care and conditions to let it "live long and prosper". It just occurred to me, I have a guppy tank and if breeding goes well, will have more fry than I want to keep - hello, free feeders!
And you're having better luck getting info from Google than I was - I couldn't find specifics, which is why I'm here. Thanks a bunch!

I think that you could be happier with a more diverse tank. although you may think having one fish in a tank is entertaining. if anything ive learned that native fish keeping can be addictive. I started with 1 swamp darter i caught by accident....that made me sell more than 600 dollars worth of eartheaters at a very low price. i have a thread on that somewhere here....in the year ive been here i went from 1 tank....to 6 with room for more coming soon. you can fill ever niche in a tank. top feeders...middle and fill the bottom with darters....read around the forum and you will fall in love with more than just a good ole bluegill.

Edited by bumpylemon, 06 July 2010 - 07:54 PM.

Welcome, Cecily! It's good to see you are doing your homework first, you'll be much happier with the results. I've never kept bluegill, I've always gone for the more colorful ones. I do know that with sunfish, especially the larger ones, you have to keep one or many. If you have two or three, you'll end up with one as the weaker ones get bullied to death. Lots of them spread out the aggression. With your plan to keep just one, you won't have any problems there.

I wouldn't worry about the water hardness. Most fish are adaptable, and unless you are breeding them (sometimes not even then) you don't have to worry about getting things just right. It's better to have the water chemistry stable than to try and adjust it.

None of the sunfish I've kept have been destructive toward plants and tank decor, but I've only kept the smaller ones. I suggest looking through the Photo and Video Gallery to see what other people are doing.

I feed my larger fish every other day. I've always heard that it's easier to overfeed than underfeed. I have a 10" grass pickerel that wiggles like a puppy and begs for food every time it sees me, even if it's stuffed to the gills. Some fish are just gluttons!

I've been looking at other fish this evening, and contemplating stocking a mix, and since I can't go bigger than 60 and have never done this before, I'm still thinking single bluegill. Quite familiar with "one or many". I've had specimen tanks before, African cichlids, and for the same reason - I didn't have enough room to house a big enough number to ensure peace in the tank, so I kept one. Except the cichlids I had were never ones that got bigger than 5" or so. This will be the first time I've had a 60 gallon specimen tank! (And bluegills have kind of the cichlid look, but without needing a heater! )
Thanks for the tip about the gallery, I'm having fun looking!

Welcome aboard! Thank you for your interest, and well thought out post. I don't have much time now, but I am sure some others will help you out in short order. What I can say is that I would not worry too much about water hardness. Lepomis are generally very hardy, and adaptable fish, as long as you maintain good water quality(ammonia, nitrites) within parameters, you should have few problems. Good luck!

Just to chime in with my experience since I just started 3-4 months ago. My tank is harboring a small pumpkinseed that I seined. It does well with a bass and perch which are about an inch larger. There is no aggression in the tank at all and everyone feeds and co-exists well. It's a fun combo, I know that sunfish can be community fish so I tried keeping three, pumpkinseed and bluegill which were the same size, and another bluegill which was a bit larger. Well when I had three there was aggression between the larger gill and the seed, so I removed the larger, then the smaller gill starting chasing the pumpkinseed around, so I let them try to work out territory and things for over a week but it didn't work. The pumpkinseed had to hide in a nook in the driftwood otherwise it would be chased all around the tank and fin nipped. The bass and perch show no aggression towards the pumpkinseed and all is well right now. They all eat just about anything I throw in there (crawlers, earthworms, dried krill, shrimp, crickets, and mealworms. The only thing they spit out is the shrimp pellets. Fun to watch and some sunfish can be pretty colorful! I love pumpkinseed's coloration, and I don't know about fish in your area, but from what I've seen the banded and the blue-spot sunfish are nice and small, and look pretty neat! Good luck with your tank!

Oh, and I have hard water, they do fine as long as your parameters are good! And they are not destructive with my plants, they like swimming through them.

Edited by MWBradshaw, 07 July 2010 - 09:14 AM.