Getting Bluegill to Breed

Well as you said Centrarchid the male completly terminated. He went from being almost black on sunday, to the same coloration as the female. I would say that he himself is a female if it wasent for the huge ear tabs, and different body structure.

Should i try again with a smaller male? or go for the biggest one i got.

Show pictures of options and I can help pick breeders. You want masculine but not fat or skinny. Symmetry good. Any wounds / health issues bad.

Here are a couple of pics, im sorry about it not showing to much, but the Bluegill closer to the camera I belive is a female, it is plumper, has small earlobes, and is the only one who has a banded appearace. The other bluegill behind it however I am not sure, it has kinda large rounded earlobes but not as large as the male nextdoor, tho it is about 2 inches longer, that the over look of the fish is much less defined, (the lack of a helmet and chestplate appearace much more gentle sloping much longer in appearace wheras the other male fish is much bulkier in appearance). Though I kinda think that the big one is also a male.
 photo(3).JPG   450.77KB   1 downloads

Here is the Male I have had since I started this project. I belive he was in breeding mode today (his dark color returned, and he was super aggresive) However I belive I messed it all up. The male was trying to force his way through the partition to get to the female GSF, and female BG and for some silly reason i thought if i removed the partition he could start courting them, long story short all he did was stress out the BG female, eat all the food on that side of the tank and eventually lost the mood to breed when I relocated him to his side of the tank again.
 photo(1).JPG   461.61KB   1 downloads

The larger fish in the first photo I added at the end of the day to the female side of the tank. It started interacting with the females, and the female BG has been showing its stomach when it becomes agressive to her, has been doing that every time it flares its gills, whereas the other male she just runs like hell and hides in a corner. Is this a good sign?

I would of just posted individual pictures of prospective males but they are hard to catch! I would just rather have the BG I currently have in the 75gal tank just get into the mood without switching them out and moving them all over the place, it just too much stress for everyone involved.

Quick update.

Completly redid the setup by removing the big males, and all GSF.

Added 6 BG (unknown sex but possibly 3males 3females) to the tank all about 5-6" in size we did this due to the fact that the large male BG was simply too big, and was killing everyone, the bluegill placed in now are aggresive and territorial but not to the point of causing serious harm to the others, so far two of the males seem to of staked out territory (do female BG become territorial aswell?). Temperature is between 75-81 feeding them daphnia, mealworms, and redworms.

Just suppose its a waiting game now.

Females do not stake out breeding territories. It is possible females may defend feeding territories as bluegill doing so I did not sex.

Make do nest close enough males fight more with each other.

Get those fish on some sort of pelleted aqua feed like used for cichlids. It is a more reliable nutrient source requiring less work. The other live / frozen / freeze dried options can still be used as supplements. The cichlids pellets are much easier on your filtration than feeds made for food and game fishes.

Update.

Today at 9:30 PM I walked into the barn and removed the insolation from the 75 gallon tank (its getting very cold in northern california at night now) and to my suprise the male bluegill has most definately made a nest. I know he made the nest for it has the circular depression characteristic and the entire left hand side of the tank looks compelelty rearanged.

Additionally the Male bluegill is on the nest. And the female bluegill which became very plump is now as thin as the male. (I thought this occured from starvation at first with daphnia quantities becomming very low)

Lastly inside the nest itself I have noticed very small clearish orbs about . <--- that big. They are sprawled all over the gravel. Some in little piles others just randomly coating things. Additionally they do not get disturbed like sand should. Could these be Bluegill eggs?

In this Photo (not mine) it shows a male Bluegill gaurding the eggs, I circled the little clearish orbs in the picture to show you guys what I think are eggs and are also present inside of my Bluegills nest.

Lastly if yes in fact they did spawn, what can the little guys eat? I do have brine shrimp ready to hatch, but can their little mouths be able to eat them?

Take a rock out and look at the little orbs using a magnifying glass. You should be able to see yolk and possibly movement. Eggs usually hatch less than 40 hours after being layed. The look for little wiggling things in rocks (prolarvae). Little guys will swim up in another 5 to 10 days according to temperature. They then called larvae and the event where they leave nest is typically after dark which we can exodus. Larvae can feed on freshly hatched brine shrimp nauplii at that point.

Get momma out of tank and feed her back up. She may be ready to repeat in 10 to 14 days if your feed is good.

I hope this works.

Following shows embryonic development of western dollar sunfish. Scroll down quickly though it and it will appear as a movie. Similar enough to bluegill to help understand what is going on in that bluegill nest. Last images are of pro-larvae which are still nest bound.

 WESTERN DOLLAR SUNFISH BROOD 1.pdf   3.68MB   21 downloads

Once new camera is in real pictures of bluegill embryos, prolarvae and larvae will be shown as you might see them in your tanks.

Edited by centrarchid, 29 August 2012 - 11:52 AM.

Update.

Today at 9:30 PM I walked into the barn and removed the insolation from the 75 gallon tank (its getting very cold in northern california at night now) and to my suprise the male bluegill has most definately made a nest. I know he made the nest for it has the circular depression characteristic and the entire left hand side of the tank looks compelelty rearanged.

Additionally the Male bluegill is on the nest. And the female bluegill which became very plump is now as thin as the male. (I thought this occured from starvation at first with daphnia quantities becomming very low)

Lastly inside the nest itself I have noticed very small clearish orbs about . <--- that big. They are sprawled all over the gravel. Some in little piles others just randomly coating things. Additionally they do not get disturbed like sand should. Could these be Bluegill eggs?

In this Photo (not mine) it shows a male Bluegill gaurding the eggs, I circled the little clearish orbs in the picture to show you guys what I think are eggs and are also present inside of my Bluegills nest.

Lastly if yes in fact they did spawn, what can the little guys eat? I do have brine shrimp ready to hatch, but can their little mouths be able to eat them?

Something about what is below bluegill male does not look right. It is too yellow. Looks sort of like freshwater sponge. Eggs/embryos would be visible. I bet if nest bound offspring present, they are as prolarvae down in between rocks.

Yes their is something in there that does look kinda off. Its like a pile of finky looking sand, spongy sort of looking like you described.

This morning I started two brine shrimp populations, hopefully everything goes well. I am astounded at how bad the timing of their spawning is however, first week of the new semester and all.

Brine shrimp populations? Clarify.

Sorry, the cysts inside a cup w/ air bubbeling so that they can hatch.

Technically they are going to populate the cup until i use them as food.

OK. I erroneously assumed you establish a breeding colony like is done with more difficult species that consume only live prey.


If male is on nest still, siphon out between rocks at bottom, move flood into a bare white or black container, and look for little wiggly things.

Ok centrarchid thank you very much for that pdf, very informative.

GOOD NEWS their are pro larvae present in the nest, a whole ton of them. They hatched sometime today. Male is still protecting the nest.
I am very suprised their are so many, at first i was expecting something around the lines of 1000 or 2000 due to only being able to observe the eggs on the dark colored rocks. But now that they are hatching it appears to be more around the 10,000 range or more. Additionally on observing both of my females it seems they both spawned with the male (both of their stomaches have receded and have the body appearance of a male bluegill).

Removed the heavy duty filter & pump and have installed a sponge filter with air bubbeler instead.

Temperature is being kept at 77-80 degrees.

Have plenty of Brine shrimp too.

Question, the prolarvae, they are being sustained by their egg sac correct? At what point do they require food? After they swim out of the nest?

Lastly, thank you centrarchid for all your assistance. And I apologize for not getting the picture of the plump females to you.. If you can imagine my females when ripe with eggs look somehwat similar to a pregnant woman who is 7-8 months pregnant. They are big.

All sounds good.

First feeding can start just prior to exodus (living nest) but not needed until a few hours post-exodus since remnants of yolk should still be present.

We have not discussed feeding amounts at all. This is going to likely result in loosing first batch of larvae. Timing / frequency and volume of feedings is everything, especially during first few days. Even if many survive first few days, you can have tremendous variation in subsequent quality of fish. Success will be associated not only with large numbers of survivors but also uniform size and continued rapid growth. Get those ladies reconditioned. This first round is likely to be just a primer for getting you larviculture technique down. If larvae and subsequent fry do not look good, then feed then back to females and start again. One good group of 5,000 fry is 10X better than a 20,000 fry made up of leapers and laggers will all sorts of cretonism going on. Lots of cretons means start over. Watch for such closely until you get handle on it, then you will spot the cretons from a distance.


Start thinking scale of culture system versus number of fingerlings to be reared. I am not clear on your filtration capacity but suspect you will be challenging it sooner than you think which result in catastrophic loss.

For feeding we are somewhat stressed aswell, ive been investigating using green water aswell as brine shrimp to give some variation and increase the amount of food available, im also going to take the week off from work/school to monitor the fry and be their to provide them with as much food as they need to increase the odds of them surviving. Our filteration system is going to be using a sponge filter with bubbeler. Luckily I belive that the 75 gal tank itself due to it being packed with sand and gravel should be able to keep ammonia and nitrite levels down, even without the heavy duty filteration, ive experimented with a 10gal tank without any frm of mechnical filteration whatsoever, filled with Bluegill, a daphnia colony, and also high amounts of yeast without having the water foul hopefully the 75gal tank preforms aswell as the 10gal tanks.

Lastly even if we can keep atleast 100 or 50 alive, I will call that a success. The next batch we get will go smoother I feel just for the fact it will not be our 1st experince with baby bluegills.

Set aside a 10-gallon aquarium with water from you breeding tank. Move spong filter with it. Siphon a couple hundred prolarvae from nest placing them in a shallow dish with gravel in it. Place that dish into 10-gallon aquarium. Start applying freshly hatched brine shrimp at 6 to 8 hour intervals. At least 2 brine shrimp cultures cultures harvested at 24-h intervals and offset from each other by about 12 hours will do trick.

Prepare for a crash course in the science / art / voodoo or feeding larval sunfish. You are going to have to learn how not to feed too much or too little. You will also learn quickly how not to degrade water quality, or to do it. Feeding is the hardest part of process to master.

Centrarchid have you ever used the boiled egg yolk method to feed fry? results ?

Yes, waste of time relative to alternatives now out there. Only seemed to work when water was already loaded with little critters. Yolk likely just enhanced the food chain. A bad day with brine shrimp was better than a good day with egg yolk.

Update, their are hydra occuring in the tank, I have manually removed the majority of the hydra who nested in the fake plants surrounding the nest, but their are still some that are setup around the nest and in the nest itself. After carefully reading http://wap.aslo.org/...ssue_6/1416.pdf (a report on the mortality rate of Bluegill by hydra) I can safely say that even though the hydra are present at such a close proximity to the larvae nearly none of them seem to have had a succesfull feeding on them (judging by the black coloration that is reported in their findings). However I have begun painstankingly and gently removing as many hydra as I can.

This introduction of hydra into the tank must have occured over the many months of feeding them daphnia, aswell as other things which could of tagged along during the feeding process of live foods. Though oddly enough I never observed any hydra until after the Bluegill have succesfully spawned. After reading the article it seems that these damned creatures are attracted to bluegill nests/nesting sites especially around the areas where the baby bluegill will swim through during their exodus from the nest.

Additionally some odd looking aquatic insect appeared just on the outskirts of the nest. It must have burrowed itself into the sand an dwas waiting till lights out to get a snack of baby bluegill, he was removed and promptly smashed with a sledge hammer.

The amount of mortality of my Bluegill due to predation as of now seems to be extremely low (this being based on the larvae carpeting the entire nest almost from end to end), and with the majority of the hydra physically removed I cannot forsee them dieing off in great numbers due to predation.

Lastly, these past few days I feel as if im learning a ton of information, in a realtively short amount of time. I can only hope that all of the research I have done prior to this point, and all of my theories will help and pay off in a realtively intact bluegill population. Though as I stated before even if we lose 99% of the babies, that 1% will still be a success for my operation.

Also, the larvae are at the black eyed stage, when should i remove the parental male?