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Pygmy sunfish for dummies?

Started by Guest_wijnands_* , Nov 12 2013 07:21 AM

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19 replies to this topic

#1 Guest_wijnands_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 07:21 AM

Recently I was searching for something else and somehow stumbled over the pygmy sunfish. A quick check told me two things.

1. This is a very rare fish over here in the Netherlands. The everglades species turns up occassionaly but that's it.
2. Its not a well documented species at all!

From then I got so fascinated that I decided to do a short article for one of the Aquarium websites over here in Europe. I'm looking for some help and pointers here and would greatly appreciate anything you'd be willing to share.

From what I read I also got the impression that a pair of these could do well in something the size of a well planted fluval edge. Can anyone confirm that? Or am I totally wrong?
I'd also appreciate pointers to reliable sources of information for the care and breeding of these fish.

Thanks!

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#2 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 12 November 2013 - 07:30 AM

search here for Elassoma gilberti and you will get everything you ever needed to know...

not sure what a "fluval edge" is exactly, but yes a pair could live in a 5 gallon tank... or even a two gallon... but you might not get much offspring survival if they get too crowded... because a happy pair in a 2 gallon tank will breed and now you ahve a lot more fish in there...

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

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#3 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 09:01 AM

I kept a 50 page topic on how I bred them for two years.

Short version: http://www.nanfa.org...Egilberti.shtml
Long version: http://forum.nanfa.o...ssoma-gilberti/
New page, 2013 75 gallon setup, ('cause I love those little buggers, not 'cause they 'need' that much space): http://forum.nanfa.o...lberti-round-2/

You have my permission to print my short article about them, as long as you credit me, credit NANFA, and send me a link to or the publishing info of your reprint.
( http://www.nanfa.org...Egilberti.shtml ). Michael, would that be okay with the Fish in Focus copyrights and whatnot?

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#4 Guest_gerald_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 09:40 AM

Welcome wijnands - you came to the right place. We have lots of Elassoma lovers in NANFA. One thing to keep in mind is they are shy fish that don't move around much. If you want fish that will brighten up a show tank and look good from across the room, you will be disappointed in pygmies. They are a fish for people with patience to sit still and watch their fish up close. Also the fry need live foods to grow (edited).

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#5 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 09:54 AM

Eh, you can tame them by hand feeding them grindal worms. Then they'll not be afraid of you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnVXXwbIU5U

Those are fish that were born in my tank, hand raised and hand fed by me their whole lives. Wild caught fish are very, very different. You won't see them. They're excellent hiders and also the wild caught ones are afraid of you, so the moment you can see them and they realize you can see them, they hide more.

And people forget they're only one inch big, maximum. As in, they spend the majority of their lives smaller than that.
Posted Image

http://gallery.nanfa... photo.jpg.html
http://gallery.nanfa...unfish.jpg.html
http://gallery.nanfa... photo.jpg.html
http://gallery.nanfa...mber 3.jpg.html

I like that, though. I give them a 55 gallon and I feel like I gave them an entire safe world to explore. Often a male doesn't make it from one side of the tank to the other, with them being territorial and all. Females, I'm sure, move around as they want. Some girls are territorial, though. I had one lady who claimed an anubias as hers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krjR06CfrlY

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#6 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 10:16 AM

By the way, a lot of the fish people call evergladei are either okefenokee or gilberti. It drives me crazy. Evergladei have gold flecks on their sides and snub noses.

Evergladei
http://www.fiskbasen..._evergladei.jpg
http://www.biologisc...Maennchen 3.jpg
http://img.photobuck...zps75df47d1.jpg
http://www.killies.c...dei_061208a.jpg
http://www.aquariump...ergladei_3x.jpg
http://mitofish.aori..._evergladei.jpg
http://www.aquariump...vergladei_x.jpg
http://www.aquarienc.../evergladei.jpg

Not an evergladei even though it is labeled as one:
http://www.nanofish..../Evergladei.jpg
http://www.aquaporta...-evergladei.jpg
Those are okefenokee (Atlantic drainage) or gilberti (Gulf drainage).

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#7 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 12 November 2013 - 11:10 AM

I disagree with the live food requirement. They will thrive and breed with with frozen foods and snails in the tank (of course I guess the snail eggs and young are live food).

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

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#8 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 11:24 AM

I disagree with the live food requirement. They will thrive and breed with with frozen foods and snails in the tank (of course I guess the snail eggs and young are live food).

Oh, yes, I didn't even catch that. I agree with Michael.

My elassoma gilberti ate frozen bloodworms from Petsmart ($5 for 30 cubes) readily. I held the cubes with my 10 inch planting tweezers in the tank water and cut the worms in half as they thawed off the cube. It worked very well. I just stopped doing it because breeding grindal worms is soooo much cheaper. Instead of $10 a month, it was $10 for almost two years' worth of dog kibbles, which I fed to the worms. And the worms are actually one of my highest selling items at conventions and club meetings, so they make their own little side profit.

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#9 Guest_gerald_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 01:00 PM

I'm having trouble visualizing a 4 mm Elassoma fry eating a frozen bloodworm. In a larger tank you might get enough rotifers, large protozoa and tiny worms growing naturally on plant litter and fish waste to provide enough live food for some of the fry to grow up to bloodworm-eating size. But I've always kept them in small tanks (2 to 5 gal) where I needed to add live food if I wanted more than just a few babies to grow up. I agree most adults (not all) will eat frozen worms or shrimp.

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#10 Guest_Joshaeus_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 03:05 PM

I've asked about pygmy sunfish on here myself. If you want to try getting elassoma to eat frozen food, keep some snails in the tank - preferably ramshorn or physa snails. The eggs and/or newborn snails will be eaten by the elassoma, preventing them from starving while convincing them to take frozen.

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#11 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 05:10 PM

I feed my fry microworms. I guess, yeah, those are a live food. I keep forgetting microworms are alive, lol.

Any fish you're breeding is usually going to benefit from a live food. Baby brine shrimp, microworms, whatever you want to use. The question is just how big the fry start out. Elassoma fry are about 2 mm ish when they hatch. They'll eat microworms once their yolk sack's used up and they'll keep eating microworms until they're large enough to eat grindals, too. Mine are of breeding age at 4 months old, which is when they're a half inch long. That's when the males start to color up and do their first, wibbly wobbly dance.

There are some products coming out now that I hear can replace live foods for raising fry. At the most recent aquarium club meeting, we had some saltwater people talking about Cyclopeeze and how you can raise fry with no live food whatsoever and they do just fine. I haven't tried those out yet because the microworms are so easy to grow and the fry of all the fish species I keep will readily eat them. Maybe I should try it, though. If you raised your fry with some sort of live food replacement, then your pygmy sunfish colony could be live-food-culture free. As long as the fry survive to adulthood, it doesn't matter what fry rearing technique you use.

Does anyone have any experience raising fry on something other than baby brine shrimp or microworms? It'd be interesting to hear about.

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#12 Guest_dac343_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 05:38 PM

A member from my local fish club gave me something called golden pearls. I intend to use it for peacock gudgeon fry if I can ever get lucky enough to catch them before dad eats them. I've tried hatching them without him but have not had any luck with it so far lol. I know a lot of people talk about this stuff a lot though. http://www.kensfish....ab140560cc4d786

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#13 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 05:48 PM

A member from my local fish club gave me something called golden pearls.

I have Ken's golden pearls, too. That's actually one of my secret reasons for having Dario dario in the same tank as my Elassoma gilberti in my current 75 gallon setup. I saw a video once of dario readily eating golden pearls and I'm hoping that if they do that in front of the Elassoma, they'll follow suit. When I tried golden pearls on the Elassoma instead of their normal live grindal worms, they turned up their noses and were like, "Are you kidding me? I'm used to you feeding me live worms". I hope the Dario dario don't do that, too, since I'm feeding this 75 gallon grindal worms, too. It's the sort of situation where I have no idea what'll happen until I try it and find out. But, yeah, the elassoma by themselves weren't having any of it. The fry tank will have a mixed population of dario and elassoma, though, theoretically.

Video link: youtube.com/watch?v=KHFSl7pv5dY

I don't know if Elassoma are necessarily the smartest fish. I mean, they're adorable, don't get me wrong. But when I fed them flake food that one time a few of them figured it out, and the rest stared with dead eyes, watching the one eat flake food and not moving to imitate. There's definitely such a thing as the ability to learn from watching others, and not all animals have it. I'm not sure if Elassoma do or not.

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#14 Guest_gerald_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 06:26 PM

I might watch you eat whole Gambusia fried in sesame oil and stare with dead eyes too. If I don't imitate, am I not smart? :-&

Maybe Elassoma are "smart" enough to know what food is supposed to look like and smell like, unlike those stupid bass and trout that think rubber worms, metal spoons, and feathers tied on sharp wires are something worth eating.

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#15 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 06:34 PM

lol, that does put it in context.

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#16 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 06:38 PM

wijnands, I hope we haven't scared you off. Definitely do get some pygmy sunfish, and please share photos of your fish and tank when you do. They're really fun fish. Not just because they're pretty, but also they have neat personalities and behavior, too.

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#17 Guest_keepnatives_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 08:55 PM

I don't know if Elassoma are necessarily the smartest fish. I mean, they're adorable, don't get me wrong. But when I fed them flake food that one time a few of them figured it out, and the rest stared with dead eyes, watching the one eat flake food and not moving to imitate. There's definitely such a thing as the ability to learn from watching others, and not all animals have it. I'm not sure if Elassoma do or not.

They were smart enough to keep you feeding them live food despite a few "dummies" that fell to the flake food. Actually maybe it was a group decision so they could get some of the flake but still keep the live stuff flowing! What clever creatures they are.

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#18 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 12 November 2013 - 10:32 PM

There are some products coming out now that I hear can replace live foods for raising fry. At the most recent aquarium club meeting, we had some saltwater people talking about Cyclopeeze and how you can raise fry with no live food whatsoever and they do just fine. I haven't tried those out yet because the microworms are so easy to grow and the fry of all the fish species I keep will readily eat them. Maybe I should try it, though. If you raised your fry with some sort of live food replacement, then your pygmy sunfish colony could be live-food-culture free. As long as the fry survive to adulthood, it doesn't matter what fry rearing technique you use.

Does anyone have any experience raising fry on something other than baby brine shrimp or microworms? It'd be interesting to hear about.

I totally forgot about the cyclopeeze and cyclopeeze flakes! Yes, I have used them and yes, elassoma will (sometimes eat that)... but they still like the frozen stuff better. (off topic warning... And darters will eat the cyclopeeze flakes blowing around in the filter outflow... it must just taste more like food). I used to put a pinch of the cyclopeeze (dust) in my elassoma tanks occasionally, and I am sure some of them were eating it.

My other "live food lazy culture" was to have live plants (hortwort or water lettuce) grow outside in a pond/trashcan... and bring it in form outside and put in the elassoma tank... they immediately saw stuff on the plant that I could not even see and went into an automatic hunting mode... you have to be careful as this can screw up territories and cause fights... but they do eat like royalty for a few days until the plant is all hunted out... and then I rotated plants from inside out and outside in for more food and hunting.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. - Benjamin Franklin

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#19 Guest_Skipjack_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 10:43 PM

Could Moina work? Never raised them, but have kept huge daphnia cultures. I have read that Moina are easier, and less prone to crashes.

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#20 Guest_dac343_*

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Posted 12 November 2013 - 10:56 PM

Could Moina work? Never raised them, but have kept huge daphnia cultures. I have read that Moina are easier, and less prone to crashes.

Personally I use moina to feed my Elassoma, pencil fish and various fry at hom . IMO they work well, feed them to shinner fry at work as well. They have several pluses over daphnia as they usually form denser cultures and can handle really high ammonia levels. Newly hatched moina are smaller than baby brine shrimp. Just going to need a seive to separate them out from the adults if you want to feed them to fry.