Collecting tips

A fall collecting trip seems likely for me. It would be a road trip from SE PA to Florida, and my goal would be mainly to collect all four species of Elassoma native to Florida. I'll be armed with a dipnet, breather bags, the Florida Collecting Guide, so I have all the collecting recommendations therein at my disposal. Any other advice? Any particularly interesting populations? Particularly, are there any better-looking pops of the banded pygmy? It's looking like the voyage will be late Oct/Early Nov.

Just make sure you check the Florida regs to make sure theres no restrictions on what your after. And a camera so we can see too.

You could set up the tanks now for the fish you'll collect. Pygmies eat really tiny food, like infusoria, rotifers, and moina. Those take time to reach a large population. So if you start now, the fish will have the advantage of being placed into an aquarium that already has a healthy population of moina and small organisms. They would like that. ^_^

Hm...two days down, two days back, most likely. Add to that the 3 days I'll spend there...am I going to have problems keeping them alive, whether in breather bags or coolers? My experience with other fish would say "no," as long as I keep the water clean, salted, and go with only 1 or 2 fish per bag. I've read enough articles in JAKA that I feel I could bring back killies from Equatorial Guinea, but I have ZERO experience collecting pygmy sunnies.

Hm...two days down, two days back, most likely. Add to that the 3 days I'll spend there...am I going to have problems keeping them alive, whether in breather bags or coolers? My experience with other fish would say "no," as long as I keep the water clean, salted, and go with only 1 or 2 fish per bag.

A breathing bag can comfortably house fish for as long as they'll last without starving to death. Kordon is the brand to go with when buying them. I got my Kordon breathing bags from aquabid.com for unit price 50 cents a bag including shippping.
Yes, you'll want to keep the fish population low in each bag.

As to the automatic salting of the water: Don't do that.
Take a test kit with you and test the water that they came from. Find out what its pH, GH, and salinity are. The pH is a measure of how acidic or basic the water is, the GH is a measure of the dissolved non-ionic mineral concentration, and the salinity is a measure of the dissolved ionic salt concentration in the water. If you find that your water at home has a lower GH or salinity than the water you collected the fish from, then yes, it would be a good idea to add crushed coral (to add non-ionic minerals) or sea salt (to add ions) to the water. The idea is to replicate the water that the fish came from as closely as you can.
So don't add salt right off the bat. Especially not to the water that the fish came from. Only add salt if the fish would be placed in water that is a lot less saline than the water it is used to. In that case, the addition of the salt makes the fish more comfortable and reduces its stress.

Other useful advice:
Don't place breathing bags right next to one another. The exchange of O2 into the bag and CO2 out of the bag is driven by a gradient between the water and the air, with the bag membrane in between. If the bag is next to another bag, that gradient does not exist.

After catching the fish, store them in a dark place. Have you ever had a bird? Have you ever had a really stressed out bird? Have you ever placed a blindfold over a really stressed out bird's eyes? It instantly calms down. The same is true for most animals. If you put blinders on a carriage horse, it doesn't spook as easily. If you store the fish in a dark box for three days, they will emerge from the experience less stressed out than if they were able to see things.

Store the fish snugly. If the bags can roll around, they might do so violently, and the fish might get injured. You can wrap breathing bags in old T-shirts, old newspapers, styrofoam, or cardboard and still have that gas gradient available and driving diffusion.

Edited by Okiimiru, 27 August 2010 - 09:30 AM.

I have to disagree with Okiimiru on salt. Adding 1 T per 5 G is my standard for transporting fish long distances. I'm not terribly interested in replicating a swamp on the ride home, I'm interested in having them make it home alive and well.
I believe salt at this level, results in improved respiratory function and reduced bacterial/fungal issues on the trip or recently at home.

I do agree that breather bags require a breathable barrier. I wrap them in newspaper inside a foam lined cardboard box as insulation.

I'm a big believer in salt, too. It can help prevent mild cases of fungus and some diseases.

Yup, especially in soft low-conductivity water, 1/2 to 1 teasp salt per gal reduces the rapid ion loss that occurs when fish are frightened. Their adrenaline release during capture causes their gill permeability to rise fast, so they lose body salts quickly, and often get fungus or Flexibacter soon afterwards on the tissues that were damaged by ion loss (especially fin edges and caudal peduncle).

Oki - one clarification on your post: GH is the German aquarists' term for "General Hardness", which is Ca++ and Mg++ hardness, or just plain "hardness" to water testing chemists. What the Germans call "Karbonate Hardness" is really alkalinity, not hardness at all.

I'm a big believer in salt, too. It can help prevent mild cases of fungus and some diseases.

Edited by gerald, 28 August 2010 - 03:12 PM.

Oki - one clarification on your post: GH is the German aquarists' term for "General Hardness", which is Ca++ and Mg++ hardness, or just plain "hardness" to water testing chemists. What the Germans call "Karbonate Hardness" is really alkalinity, not hardness at all.

About the GH thing:
Okay, now I'm all confused. If the calcium and magnesium are in ionic form, then why don't they affect the pH? Yet another annoying fish question for me to ask one of my chemistry teachers. I'm sure they all wonder how I come up with these questions I ask them.

About the salt:
I play it safe and don't add salt. Some species react to it positively and others don't. I used to salt every fish, to 'fight stress', but then 18 neon tetras (I wanted a school of them) that I had brought home from the pet store didn't like the salt so much (all dead within 2 hours). So now I don't add salt. *sighs* And I did so want a school of neon tetras...

The question with ionized calcium and magnesium is not how they affect pH, but rather how pH affects them. The pH action with them would be how favorable are the conditions for them to react with hydroxide and precipitate out of solution, which would tend to lower pH (acid/base can also be measured as pOH if you want to be a total weenie). Hopefully your chemistry teacher wouldn't be blindsided by such a question, depending on his/her work otherwise(!).

Interesting read on benefits of salting. http://www.aces.edu/...e/pdf/462fs.pdf

I have fooled with fish for a few years now, and would not even think of transporting fish long distances without salt. In fact I add salt whenever I collect fish, and have always kept my home aquariums salted. Sometimes to a point that you can read the level on a hydrometer.

There may certainly be some fish that have adverse reactions to salt, but the vast majority benefit from low levels of salt in their water. If the large fish farms do it, and spend the money on it, there must be a benefit.

I am also a big fan of Jungle Bag Buddies. I have seen positive results when I used these to ship fish. http://www.amazon.co...k/dp/B00025YSC4

Edited by Skipjack, 29 August 2010 - 01:28 PM.

All the pygmy sunfish I have collected over the years (most not kept) came from very soft (>50 hardness) and low pH (usally less that 6pH) water. Always collected in a lot of aquatic plants, usually lots of shade and most of the year will be low flow (blackwater). When I have brought them back, feeding was always easy, frozen mysis (sometimes cut smaller) or frozen bloodworms. Be wary of keeping them with any other species, they do not tolerate other fish well even in tanks with lots of cover or aquatic plants.

On the issue of salt, I have always used salt in my quartine tanks for all native freshwater fish, for pygmy's the max for me would be 2-3ppt. Most species I generally quarantine at 5ppt, many I have taken up to 7-9ppt for 2-3 if they have external parisites.

David

About the GH thing:
Okay, now I'm all confused. If the calcium and magnesium are in ionic form, then why don't they affect the pH? Yet another annoying fish question for me to ask one of my chemistry teachers. I'm sure they all wonder how I come up with these questions I ask them.

About the salt:
I play it safe and don't add salt. Some species react to it positively and others don't. I used to salt every fish, to 'fight stress', but then 18 neon tetras (I wanted a school of them) that I had brought home from the pet store didn't like the salt so much (all dead within 2 hours). So now I don't add salt. *sighs* And I did so want a school of neon tetras...

Yeah, fish from very acid water often do not do well with salt, but it seems our native fish from acid waters benefit from it. I don't put it in my tanks -plants usually do not like salt, but I do use it when collecting.

Okay, ignoring the unintentional hijack - salt's a no-brainer for me for any small or blackwater fish. I'm GOING to salt - I'm good to go?

I do agree that breather bags require a breathable barrier. I wrap them in newspaper inside a foam lined cardboard box as insulation.

The plan is BB's and newsprint, and a lot of finger-crossing that the bags don't leak. Somebody mentioned getting bags "only" from Kordon - just curious, I guess, but who else MAKES them? I though Kordon held the patent...?