Gambusia from a pond in Flaherty Park, Wake Forest, NC

Two females that are about the same size. Ask if you want more pictures or information please. These fish have been kept in an aquarium for almost a year and have not grown much. I fed them dried food made for cichlids. They used to be in a small glass aquarium with a filter that grew some algae on the sides with several other females and males that were caught in the same time and place with just a few rocks. They are always fighting each other. The black stripe on their eyes is very interesting. These two fish were kept in an aquarium by themselves for two days when these pictures were taken. These pictures were taken about a week ago.
The female "#1". Less green and brown than the other one. Kept in a small plastic aquarium for two days with much less algae than the #2 female. The algae is from the exact same spot where these fish were caught. The algae has been indoors for several days but was infront of a window that had a lot of sunlight.




Female #2 Alot more skittish than female #1, maybe because she has been kept in an aquarium with a curvy front for two days. I do not know how these fish acted before they were moved to these plastic aquariums from the small glass aquarium with the other Gambusia.

These appear to be standard, run of the mill Gambusia holbrooki. There is quite a bit of variation in these fish based on habitat and water conditions.

There's native Elodea in that pond too, I think it's E. nutalli - which I rarely see wild in NC.
Gambusia do better in a big group. If you have too few, the dominant one will terrorize the rest.

Thank you Dustin for the ID! How can you tell? I have about 15 of them but they seem pretty tough. Most of them are in a small aquarium so they are fighting all day but they do not die just a little torn fins and a little stressed I guess but it might not be because of fighting just bad water or not good food. Oh, wow. So you are in Wake Forest. Hello.

Edited by GambusiaNo2, 07 December 2013 - 11:28 PM.

Gerald's our regional representative for North Carolina. He's awesome. Keep an eye out for the field outing notices he posts here periodically; going out into a river with his group of 20 native fish enthusiasts was the most fun I've had with NANFA

Wow, I did not know there were people who did that. How many species of Elodea are in that pond?

Hey neighbor. I live in the Glen Royall Mill Village about a mile from that pond. There's only two species of native Elodea in the southeastern US (E. canadensis and E. nutalli) and the Flaherty Park pond is the ONLY place I've ever seen E. nutalli. I would love to know how it got there, in an old farm pond at the very head of a stream. Gerald Pottern seems like the most likely culprit, but it really wasn't me, I swear. Maybe whoever stocked the mosquitofish brought the Elodea too. E. canadensis is not common here either. I have both kinds growing in plastic tubs on my driveway if you want to compare them sometime. The other very common Elodea-looking thing that is widespread in NC (WF reservoir, Neuse below Falls Dam, Eno River, etc) is the nasty invasive Hydrilla verticillata. Hydrilla and Egeria (Egeria is the plant sold as "Anacharis" or "Elodea" in pet shops) usually have 4 to 7 leaves per whorl on the stem, while "real Elodea" has only 3 leaves per whorl. But, I have been fooled several times by small/weak-growing Hydrilla that had only 3 leaves per whorl. BTW, the Raleigh Aquar Soc will have a native fish/plant field trip on Feb 14 (I'm leading it) as part of their annual weekend conference. Might be fun if you can make it. ... and welcome to NANFA.

Mosquitofish is our only NC freshwater fish that looks like a guppy. The shape and position of the fins and the flat head and upturned mouth (designed for surface feeding) are dead giveaways. Adding some salt (1 teasp per gallon) may help the torn fins recover. They have quite a reputation for being vicious little things. Down around Wilmington and Brunswick County you can find male mosquitofish mottled with black spots.

Thank you Dustin for the ID! How can you tell? I have about 15 of them but they seem pretty tough. Most of them are in a small aquarium so they are fighting all day but they do not die just a little torn fins and a little stressed I guess but it might not be because of fighting just bad water or not good food. Oh, wow. So you are in Wake Forest. Hello.

Thank you for the information. If I meet you I would love it. But I am only 15 so I could probably not take that trip. There is Gambusia affinis which is said to be almost identical in looks. Except the holbrooki has more dorsal fin rays and the male has a spine or spines on the third ray on the gonopodium which the affinis do not have. Are there G. affinis introduced to NC and if there are, are they common? Is it true that the two kinds interbreed readily? When I came to America two years ago I did not know about that the livebearers live here in the United States. I have had only one female Mosquitofish (from a pond in Joyner Park) give birth to live young and the young died. The fry were kind of small compared to swordtails and platys and also kind of weak which might not be normal for this species if kept healthy. I pretty much neglected these fish until a week ago so maybe they have given birth without me seeing it.

We have heterandria formosa in the state, too, but it's a little bit different looking. There's gold form and wild type. I keep the gold form, so that's all I have pictures of:

http://gallery.nanfa... left6.jpg.html

Regarding the 15 years old thing, you're welcome to bring your parents. We've got a convention every year, and this year it's in North Carolina. That'd be a good family vacation
More information: http://www.nanfa.org/convention.shtml

The 2014 NANFA annual convention will be held June 5-8 at the North Carolina Forest Service Training Facility located on the banks of the Linville River in Crossnore, North Carolina, which is about 30 minutes southof Boone. This place is closely located to the Catawba, Nolichucky (Tennessee) and New River watersheds.While the event runs from 5-8 June, arrangements are being made to stay on the 4th and depart on the 9th for those who want to do this.

There are 5 dormitories available with 45 rooms for a maximum of 88 beds. Most rooms have 2 single beds and a sink. Buildings A and B are closest to the dining facility and each have 14 double rooms and 1 single, all with sinks. Building A, which will be our primary gathering place, has separate men and women’s restroom/showers. Single women would most likely stay in this building, as well as couples. Our registration andauction can be held here. Building B has the same number of rooms but only one unisex shower/rest room. Both have microwaves, refrigerators, and TV. There is a large burn pit outside these buildings for gatherings. The Mountain Lodge sleeps 11 (1 single) and has a unisex shower/restroom. It also has a full kitchen. The River Lodge is the newest and sleeps 9 – one room has 3 beds. No sinks in these rooms. There are 2 shower/restrooms in this building so couples and single females could stay here also. Large gathering room upstairs. The Helitack Building is about a ¼ mile away and sleeps 10, no sinks in the rooms. It has a full kitchen with 2 bathrooms.

Costs to stay here are very reasonable. If you come in on Thursday and leave Sunday, room and meals will be $144, plus registration. Registration will be $75 for members, $100 for non-members (includes 1 year membership), $ 35 for students and collecting spouses, and $12 for non-collecting spouses. All registrations include cook out on Friday. Since the Forest Service needs to know how much food to buy, you will need to send your final payment to NANFA by May 9th in order to allow them to buy the right amount of food (but see below about early registration). Late comers may be able to stay at the facility but keep in mind that numbers are limited and they DO NOT take credit cards.

There are a number of campgrounds in the area including the one at Linville Falls operated by the National Park Service, which is only 6 miles away. Two motels are located in Linville Falls and 1 in Pineola, both about 5 miles away. There are a number of good restaurants in nearby Linville Falls, Crossnore, and Newland. The nearest airport is in Asheville some 70 miles and 90 minutes away.

Friday will consist of collecting/snorkleing in nearby watersheds with arrival back at the facility at reasonable time to enjoy the cook out and auction. Saturday will also be more collecting/snorkeling but there will also be a collecting challenge between 2 teams who will visit the same 4 sites, in reverse order – all catch and release. Numbers will be limited on these teams so when registration opens up, if you wish to compete, be prepared to register. There will an extra fee ($10) for this which will go to the funding of t-shirts for the winning team. Announcement of when registration opens up will be in the first 2014 American Currents and on the Forum. Sunday will be more of the same with some groups heading in different directions on their way home or staying in the area.


We will try and get trip leaders under the scientific collecting permit of the host so no other licenses will be needed unless you decide to collect on your own, before or after the convention.

Sorry for late response. I still do not think I will go to the convention. My family does not take vacations. Or actually we have a few times to the beach to visit our grandmother because she will die soon. She has alzheimer but still she has an amazing personality and is interesting just forgets every 30 seconds.

Yes, I noticed that they vary a lot, LOL they should call them chameleon fish. My Gambusia change color very much. In a minute or less when they go down to black gravel they will turn very dark grey, almost as dark as the gravel but then a little bit after they go up to the middle or surface of the tank they turn lighter into dark grey. They are iridescent. Their shininess changes in different places. The Gambusia that I have in a very big light tank with white sand are very light in color and when put in the small aquarium with the black gravel they turn darker but it takes several days to turn as dark as the ones originally in the small aquarium maybe because it is more acidic or something, I do not know. I think the big tank is more basic but not sure. I have kept a male and female Gambusia together in a small glass cup for about two days without disturbing them and then took out the male and kept the female in for maybe another 3 days so do they need very little oxygen? I did not see her go up to the surface and she did not move her gills much. They move their gills a lot when I net them into a new aquarium or something.

There's only two species of native Elodea in the southeastern US (E. canadensis and E. nutalli) and the Flaherty Park pond is the ONLY place I've ever seen E. nutalli. I would love to know how it got there, in an old farm pond at the very head of a stream.

I do not understand. Is the pond a part of a farm? Do you mean that the Elodea are only in one spot around the pond close to a farm? Or do you mean that is the first place you found it and then it spread to the pond? You made a mistake in "There's". It is There are, not There is. Everybody seems to say that . Thank you for the welcome.

Edited by GambusiaNo2, 13 December 2013 - 04:13 PM.

Yes they are more tolerant of low oxygen than most other fish. But a small cup with an open surface probably has enough gas exchange to keep the dissolved oxygen reasonably high.

What I meant about the farm pond is that Flaherty Park WAS a farm long before the Town acquired it for use a park, and I'm guessing the Gambusia and Elodea may have been put in the pond decades ago before it became a Town park. Most farms have dams built on their small streams to capture and store water for irrigation during dry weather. I think that pond is shown on the 1970 Wake County soil map.

Thanks for the grammar correction. I guess there's no acceptable contraction form of "there are". I wonder why "they're" is OK for "they are" but we don't use "there're" for "there are". English don't make no sense.

Bad video of two females fighting.

It's always baffled me WHY female Gambusia fight; more so than other livebearer females. I can understand males battling for prestige to mate, but I'm sure that male would be happy to mate with them both (if they ever stop fighting). Wild Gambusia usually cruise around in schools, feeding as a group, so I dont think feeding territory is an issue. The only reason I can think of is that a female about to deliver young might want to chase away all other fish from the spot where she's planning to give birth.

I thought that they were very aggressive because they could claim a territory in the wild. Have you seen them in an area that has a lot of logs fallen into a pond? There they might actually claim territories but that is just a wild guess.
Edit: I have seen males claim territories in a small netted box made for live bearers to give birth (you know what I mean?). I had 5 or so adult males in there and juvenile females. The same male would control and chase away other males that get too close in that one corner. But they would shift territory often but usually the biggest male would take about half the area and it would stay like that for a while. I have also seen territory like things happening when I made a little stream with some plastic sheets in a tank and heated it with a heater. The males would (no big females even then) control areas. A male would keep a little dent in the plastic sheet and chase other males away and then come back and stay until another male comes too close. The males would have territories right beside each other so they would be fighting a lot.

Edited by GambusiaNo2, 04 January 2014 - 01:53 PM.

here in fl we have a plethora of mosquito fish including the mottled type, they are mean and extremely cannibalistic, I have watched them chase a female delivering around to swallow the fry immediately on delivery, we also have heterandria Formosa, which are very tiny and docile and easy to reproduce since they seldom eat their own, and the fry are very good at hiding, we also have mollies which are great but get ick and other infections very easily

Video of the Gambusia holbrooki. One or two of the ones might be from Joyner Park. They barely fight in this aquarium. I saw two babies in the little plastic aquarium in the pictures I showed above which has three females right now.

Edited by GambusiaNo2, 29 January 2014 - 11:38 PM.

I can hear those baby Gambusia in the background; I didn't realize how human-like they sound. If you need a tank light I've probably got a spare one in my shed I can give you. The Limnobium especially looks like it could use more light. ~~ gerald

I can hear those baby Gambusia in the background; I didn't realize how human-like they sound. If you need a tank light I've probably got a spare one in my shed I can give you. The Limnobium especially looks like it could use more light. ~~ gerald

LOL. I probably do not need a tank light. The ones in that tank in the video are not doing too well compared to others. Some of the Limnobium in other tanks are growing.
Pictures of Gambusia holbrooki.