Hello All,

I have a request for master's thesis ideas. I am a master's student at SUNY Brockport in Western New York, and am very interested in going into the field of rare/threatened/endangered freshwater fish breeding. I have one field season here to collect, breed, and rear fish in a scientific laboratory with a minimal budget.

I'm asking if anyone knows of any fish native to western New York aka Lake Ontario tributaries that they've always thought would be awesome to breed but no one has figured it out yet, or progress has been hindered by collection permits or lack of collection equipment. I have trap nets, seines of any size, backpack and boat electroshocking, and just about any other method you can think of available to me. I also work with a professor who is fairly well accomplished with hormone induction of breeding, so I don't necessarily need to breed these fish naturally. I am from Maryland originally, so a lot of these fish are new to me, so I'd love for people to throw me suggestions, bounce ideas, or provide any input they could.

Some ideas I've had so far:
--Pirate perch (Aphredoderus sayanus) because they are super cool and there's only one or two lit articles on their captive breeding. Could help identify breeding protocols for what may become a listed species someday in certain areas

--Log perch (Percina caprodes) because they look like darters and are super cool and there's not a whole lot of info on them.

--Darters (johnny, tessellated, raindbow, and green are most common here) because everybody does it and it's probably something I should know how to do. Would need a scientific question or to do something truly novel.

--Pickerels (chain or grass)-- try and solve spawning substrate questions and possible intensive culture for profit.

--Bowfin-- there's a lot of failed attempts documented but questions remain about maternal care and breeding triggers.

--Eastern banded killifish-- I had a $ idea about breeding these guys as a native biological mosquito control.

Thanks so much for your time and interest,
David Sanderson-Kilchenstein
SUNY Brockport

I have bred pirate perch in aquariums and ponds. Breeding for numbers was not achieved.

Bowfin is as I understand it a paternal brooder that operates like a black bass although earlier in spring. Juveniles of such are extremely easy to feed train and rear in an intensive system.

Thanks centrarchid. I think I've decided on bowfin, as I can't find anywhere that they've been bred in captivity, besides ponds. Two labs have even tried hormone injection but weren't successful.

If anyone has had experience with bowfin, I'd love to get some details on equipment, water parameters, etc. before I start ordering supplies. Our very own NANFA here actually has given me the best info, and I'm about to read the Hoover and Strange 2002 paper.

Dave

I have experience with respect to feed training bowfin fry which in my opinion is simple. I also have expereince breeding larger species out of season indoors. Do you have a heat pump / chiller? Photoperiod controllers and light sources other than incandescent? What size tanks do you have available? To realize success based on pond experience, you need quality adults now to get spawns next spring. Feed trained adults will be easier to condition.

Budget, how minimal?

Coming from someone who is finishing up MS research... Before you go into your major professor's office with an idea, but sure that you can provide justification for the proposed research. Meaning, you'll have to provide goals, objectives, and the importance and implications of potential results of the study. You'll not only need this in the proposal, but also if it goes through, make sure you can answer the "so what?" question. For example, you mention mosquito control with killifish.. this kind of stuff. Good luck! And let us know what you roll with!

Edited by UncleWillie, 21 September 2012 - 10:42 AM.

Bowfin a potential foodfish and gamefish. Hatchery production could be management tool for restoration / conservation efforts.


Any studies observing reproductive / parental behavior of bowfin? Male primary caregiver but what else goes on? Females role? Brooding? Supplying food? Anti-predator activities. Age / size where parental behavoir stops? Behavior of juveniles one parental care stops?

Thanks UncleWillie for the advice. In addition/expansion to centrarchid's comments, they apparently make an excellent caviar, that in some places, esp Europe, goes for a lot of money. They are also a candidate species in PA for state-level endangered status. And, as a fisherman I'd love to see more interest in targeting Bowfin for sport, as they are very aggressive, large, and can fight like hell. There's an interesting website of bowfin anglers. http://www.bowfinanglers.com/

@ centrarchid: Budget is very minimal (as in like $300. Yay for state schools). I have at my disposal a building with a 800gal circular tank and outdoor aquaculture ponds, and many smaller 100-200 gal plastic tubs. I think I may use all of them to see if/what works. If the ponds don't work, then I can't really blame the tanks for not working. The building has heat, and since it's fall already I'm not worried about chilling the water. I will collect the breeders soon, and I plan on just keeping the water barely above freezing so the fish can have a "winter". Studies using bowfin usually caught wild specimens, ran their experiment, and say not all that much about their requirements in captivity, except the paper I mentioned which I still need to read. Otherwise, there is quite a bit of information on their reproductive behavior in the wild, which again is a mountain of papers I have to read asap. Hopefully I can glean from these papers what possibly went wrong in previous attempts at captive breeding. I have florescent lights with simple timers available, 15amp water heaters, I need to get pumps for filtration (thinking little giants probably), and large filter housings (some weird system that I can retrofit for what I'm doing). I do wonder about substrate--apparently the male builds the nest by clearing off muck from "roots" (probably lilly roots) and chewing off SAVs. I've thought about trying to mimic or do a natural substrate in the large tank, and keeping 3/4 of it covered with real or fake lily pads. I need to give him something to nest in, and he may not do it if it's gravel.

Sorry for the bulky reply, and thanks for picking brains with me.

DSK

Most of the papers on bowfin are very limited on information I think is critical for controlled propagation.



Can you keep some of the wild caught fish out in ponds with some sort of minnow provided as feeder fish for winter? Pond size needs to be considered. Experience on my part limited but 3 pairs may be all a 1/10 acre pond can hold. DO NOT WASTE TIME ON BROOD FISH THAT ARE NOT PLUMP NOW! They may not condition well over winter regardless of conditions.



800-gal tank I think will be tight for breeding them in. Smaller tubs would be suitable for rearing young but filtration will need some serious consideration. Bowfin fry / fingerling stages grow fast and eat a lot. Growth is very uniform when feeding regimen (type of feed, amount of feed, how it is applied) good. We used Bio Kiawa pellets as better attributes for RAS use than most domestically produced aquafeeds. As big as the little buggers are at first feeding, they might be trainable strait to an aquafeed but I would have lots of freshly hatched brine shrimp at ready.



Spawning substrate. I have seen nest made by ~7 lbs males (presumably male only builds but you need to confirm) and they are usually associated with topography where slope approaches 45 degrees and bottom in stabilized in part by fibrous roots of aquatic plants. Depth was about 36” inches and 4 to 6’ away from shore. Nest bowl was bigger and deeper than a similar sized male largemouth bass makes by tail sweeping only. See how fish excavates nest site. Try using sphagnum moss as a substrate cover. A thoroughly washed silt loam might be suitable substrate to fish yet allow rapid clearing so you can see behavior and brood.

They are prone to jump and electrical fields as promoted my pumps may aggravate issue. I am pretty sure courtship will be over several days and aggression will be part of sequence. Female may at times need to back away from core of breeding territory. Making so female can hide might help with that.



Ponds. How big and many? Show picture of 800-gal tank and can it be connected via pump to a pond?

Ground is breaking! Here's what I am/have set up so far:

--500 gallon circular tank, 6' x 2.3' (800 would have been better)
--3 - 150 gallon Rubbermaid agricultural tubs plus a 60 gal feeder tank
--up to 2 of these ponds. I figure they're about 0.13 acres.

I have pumps and pipe that I could recirculate with a pond, which is an awesome idea I hadn't thought about (might have to put your name on my paper if this works!). Either the 15 amp heater or the gigantic agitator (don't know the specs) would keep the water near the intake pipe from freezing. The rest would have to rely on really good insulation. There are about 6 sweetwater centrifugal pumps at my disposal (nobody knew they were there!) up to 2 hp. Pond-to-tank-rim is about a head of about 20 ft, I'd get somewhere around 7000 gph. I'd have plenty to recirc 1250 gallons.

Otherwise I have data from 60 coastal wetland sites that I have set 3 to 9 fyke nets in on Lake Ontario paired with water quality parameters. Part of my thesis will include some multivariate analysis of water quality vs. bowfin capture (about 60 sites caught adult bowfin). I've already run simple averages so I know where to set levels for my tanks on basic WQ parameters.

As things are set up right now (before I just realized that I could recirc with a pond), the 500 gal has a standpipe to a wet/dry sump, a 600 gph pump running to a overflow filter. Both filters are 6 cubic ft. The 150 gal tubs and feeder tank are set with 3" overflow bulkheads, linking to a wet/dry with a 1/4 hp centrifugal pump.

I'm excited about the mechanics, if you couldn't tell, but worried none of these will be large enough. The 150 gallon tubs I figure will only be holding tanks in case anyone croaks from the 500 gallon. I've thought about using one of them for another species that is much more widely bred in captivity as this is my first attempt at scientifically breeding any fish. Largemouth, channel cats, bullhead...something easy so that I can tell if the bowfin failed because I'm a noob or because of something unknown, like previous failures. Heck, I could even do another tub for pirate perch--I bet it'd be plenty of room for em.

Substrate: I've been worried about using a mineral substrate with bowfin as they seem to be a very marshy species and we've caught them almost exclusively either in lily pad zones or in emergent broadleaf (arrow-arum type stuff) zones. Could it be possible to use a natural organic muck substrate? Seeing into the water would be more difficult, but perhaps bowfin haven't been captive bred because they are super spooky of not having the right nest material, much like salmonids. Any input on the substrate where you have observed nests? Or the vegetation type or species (i.e. cattail versus bullrush vs. Araceae etc.). The info you gave on nesting was awesome, by the way. Haven't come across those parameters in the literature yet so thank you so much.

The ponds will also be a control of sorts since repro has worked there already. They are chocked full of fatheads and goldfish, which I would guess would be gone if 2 or 3 breeding pairs were stocked from now until the end of May. I'm going to get some volunteers and seine the ponds next week and try and estimate how much forage is available there. Will also determine how much forage I will have to electroshock for feeding the tankers. The ponds also have quite a bit of vegetation around the edges (mostly cattail). I could try and place some other spawning substrate in the ponds but will probably have to be artificial. The prof hates the cattails as it is and would flip if I planted lilys or aracea spp. The ponds also have a very thin organic layer as they are clay-filled. Doesn't make me very hopeful for success. I'll be testing the water in the ponds tomorrow and I'd bet $100 there's half the alkalinity as our tap water here. The average alk from the fyke net data was 180, compared to an overall avereage of about 150 where they weren't caught.

Thanks again for picking brains.
Dave

This sounds like an awesome project. I'm very interested to hear more... any updates?

Dave-
We should chat. I will send you a PM.
-Scott