Javascript Disabled Detected

You currently have javascript disabled. Several functions may not work. Please re-enable javascript to access full functionality.

10 gallon Elassoma evergladei setup

Started by Michael Wolfe , May 03 2014 07:51 PM

Next

Please log in to reply

26 replies to this topic

#1 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 03 May 2014 - 07:51 PM

These are from our "Back to the Swamp" trip a couple of years ago...

He has settled in and darkened up and started dancing since I moved them to this setup
Posted Image

She is bigger than he is and not easily impressed.
Posted Image

sometimes he gets ignored even when he is all spangles
Posted Image

but he knows how to turn on the black and dance it out for her
Posted Image

And I have seen at least three juveniles in this tank this afternoon when I was cleaning things up a bit. They hug the bottom and only move if they absolutely have to, but they are definitely growing...

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

Back to top

#2 mattknepley

NANFA Member

Smack-dab between the Savannah and the Saluda.

Posted 04 May 2014 - 08:18 AM

Very nice! Daddy-o is a good lookin' fish when he cleans up. Good luck with the fry. Do you do anything special in the food dept. for the weest ones, or are they on a "thrive or die on your own accord" regimen?

Matt Knepley
"No thanks, a third of a gopher would merely arouse my appetite..."

Back to top

#3 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 04 May 2014 - 08:39 AM

no, not really... I have hornwort in there for cover and I never clean out the mulm in that tank... they just get mostly frozen food (like half a cube a few times a week)... and sometimes they get a really small pellet that I have found that the adults pick at (Spectrum something I think).

But I have seem really small Elassoma grab a brine shrimp that is almost as big as they are and shake it like a dog with a toy. Now this is certainly not going to get the survival rate that other live foods would, but maybe I am just selectively breeding for fish that can be ignored... keep it simple fishkeeping. I thought I saw a tiny sliver or two last weekend, and this weekend I am sure that I saw at least three miniature fish about 1/6 the size of the adults. And that is just the ones that I can see... they are darn difficult to see when they are that small and still and tan.

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

Back to top

#4 Guest_Dustin_*

Guests

Posted 04 May 2014 - 09:57 AM

Very pretty little evergladei. It's surprising how much they look like my local evergladei coming from so many drainages away. I also used the KISS method when I was breeding pygmies. Rarely do water changes or clean sponges, feed foods targeted at the adults and produce enough sustainable young to replace the parents.

Back to top

#5 Guest_Joshaeus_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 06:13 AM

Out of curiosity, Michael, but how long did it take the evergladei to figure out that the bloodworms were food?

Back to top

#6 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 08 May 2014 - 07:27 AM

I don't feed bloodworms (I developed an allergic reaction, eyes swelled shut, it is not fun). And to be honest, these fish are older (at least the female is). They were in a tank mixed with some American Flagfish juveniles (long story). I noticed then only a few months ago and begin to hunt them and pull them out and put in their own tank. After the trauma of being hunted and netted and transferred to another habitat it took them a week or so to see me as the "food guy". Yesterday they stormed the front of the tank and attacked the brine shrimp like Lepomis (recognizing that it is a 1 inch fish and a 10 gallon tank... stormed meant that they went at their full speed for 9 inches... which is faster than you might think and actually kind of funny to watch) and attacked meant immediately eating the first brine shrimp they came to with no stalking or positioning behaviour which is their normal cautious nature (visually spot food, hover, turn towards food, calculate speed and distance, hover, align, hover, lunge forward 3/4 of an inch while opening jaws and sucking in the food, swallow, repeat).

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

Back to top

#7 Guest_Joshaeus_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 09:22 AM

So they are fed frozen bbs?

Back to top

#8 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 08 May 2014 - 10:01 AM

They are fed... and eat... all of these...

In tank pond snail eggs from the big as nickels snails in there (see the first picture, that is not perspective, that snail is bigger than my fish)
Frozen Brine Shrimp (not baby brine)
Frozen Mysis Shrimp
Frozen Daphnia
Freeze Dried Brine Shrimp (rolled between my fingers underwater for a few seconds to loosen it up and make it sink)
New Life Spectrum Pellets

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

Back to top

#9 Guest_Joshaeus_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 10:09 AM

You think that they would take decapsulated brine shrimp eggs?

Back to top

#10 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 08 May 2014 - 10:46 AM

I dont have any experience with those. It seems that it takes some "training" to get them to recognize certain things as food. I know I will take some crap for this, but I think they are very visual hunters and they "see" things that we cannot even see. I think they can see the shape of something like a thawed out frozen brine shrimp. It has a body and legs and a tail and looks sort of like an animal kind of shape. They recognize that as a potential bug to eat. They don't see flake as an animal thing so they ignore it. Same with pellets on the first day. But once they get the idea that you are the food guy and you are following the food ritual (they see you walk up, you dump something in, etc.) they begin to assume that they should strike at whatever is falling through the water column. I have seen them eat the pellets (and not spit them out). I think that if you fed them thawed out frozen brine shrimp every other day for a couple of weeks, then skipped like four days, then fed them something new, that they would at least try it.

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

Back to top

#11 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 10:58 AM

I agree, elassoma are very visual. And they're curious. Once they correlate you with food, yeah, they'll give something a go.

Example, one of my elassoma gilberti trying flake food. Not pictured: the dozens of elassoma unwilling to try flake, who starved to death.
Posted Image

http://gallery.nanfa...rom surface.jpg

So the issue is not that none of them won't eat it, but that a large number of them won't eat it. I got sick of watching the majority of the fish in my colony starve to death, so I stopped trying to feed them flake. If I had a harder heart I'd put each generation of my breeding project through a flake-only phase before I selected my breeders for making the next generation, but watching them suffer when I have grindal worms right here--I can't do it. The benefit to selecting for a flake-adapted elassoma population is not worth it in my mind, when pet stores sell frozen cubes of bloodworms that are readily available to people unwilling to breed grindal worms. So although I've tried decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, Ken's golden pearls, and flake food, I just wasn't willing to let the majority of my population starve so that a lucky few could be selected for and survive. Also, the ones actually eating flake never ate enough to really color up and breed. Also a problem. They seemed to only eat enough to subsist, not become fat enough to spawn. Sorta like if you forced a human to eat nothing but vegetables and salads; they wouldn't starve to death, but they wouldn't eat as much or as happily as if you gave them the full grocery store to choose from. Could this possibly be overcome by a few years of letting the lowest quartile of the population least willing to eat flake food die of starvation before fattening up the survivors and letting them spawn? It's possible, but I'm not going to be the one to do it.

Posted Image

http://gallery.nanfa...nes surface.jpg

Back to top

#12 Guest_Dustin_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 11:19 AM

I don't believe anyone asked about, or was advocating for, a prepared food only diet. The questions have been based around acceptable forms of food for Elassoma. While I agree that a variety of small live foods is ideal for these guys, this is not always possible and some flake or pelleted foods (ie. earthworm flake or Spectrum pellets) make excellent substitutes once the fish are properly trained to take them. Wild fish, in general, have to be tricked into taking prepared foods. If you drop a flake or pellet in front of the majority of wild caught fish (with obvious exceptions like minnows, topminnows and some sunfish), they may never recognize it as food. If you introduce these prepared foods alongside live or frozen foods and slowly shift the ratio towards majority prepared foods, the fish will generally accept the prepared foods as such and you will be able to supplement the live or frozen food diet with prepared food items.

Back to top

#13 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 12:08 PM

I don't believe anyone asked about, or was advocating for, a prepared food only diet. The questions have been based around acceptable forms of food for Elassoma.

True, I did not specifically state my experience when feeding a rotation of decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, Ken's golden pearls, flake food, grindal worms, and thawed frozen bloodworms. So I guess I'll say it outright: I have found that when live or frozen foods are available, the elassoma will not eat the dehydrated foods.

Specifically, when either live grindal worm or thawed frozen bloodworms were present, the elassoma simply would not eat on the days of Ken's golden pearls, decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, and flakes. They would wait for the live and frozen to come back and eat then. The only way to get them to be willing to ingest the dry foods was to starve them for several days first as Michael mentioned in his post. After a few days, some figure out that the live worms and thawed frozen insect larvae source had dried up. Only when they were really desperate after several days of no food at all did they begin to nibble dry food. Or at least that's what my experience has been. So if you rotate dry and live/frozen, they'll just not eat on the dry food days. If you starve them for a few days, some will try to eat the dehydrated food. Keep them on the dehydrated food long term? My experience with long term dehydrated food fed elassoma gilberti is that the vast majority of elassoma in the colony died and the ones that remained living did not spawn until they were again fed live/frozen food.

Long story short: In 2011, I tried to feed my elassoma gilberti colony dry flake food only for several months. A lot died and the ones that lived didn't spawn. I put them back on live food diet (grindal worms and thawed frozen blackworms) and they ate and became fat. I was able to collect and hatch fertile eggs. I tried mixing dry and live/frozen foods. They ignored the dry, waiting for the days when I fed live/frozen. If fed at the same time, they'd just snatch the worm or midge larve and ignore the dry particles. I used a variety of dry foods: Ken's golden pearls, flakes, earthworm flakes from Ken's, decapsulated brine shrimp eggs, etc. They just wait for the grindal worms and thawed frozen bloodworms to come back. Dry food just doesn't work, in my experience, with elassoma. Not mixed with other foods, not alone. They didn't spawn without live/frozen foods.

If you introduce these prepared foods alongside live or frozen foods and slowly shift the ratio towards majority prepared foods, the fish will generally accept the prepared foods as such and you will be able to supplement the live or frozen food diet with prepared food items.

In my experience that's just not true with elassoma. I tried it, many times.

Back to top

#14 Guest_Erica Lyons_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 12:42 PM

Michael, can you video your elassoma eating those pellets? I'd like to learn about that. If I could get mine to eat a pellet that'd be awesome.

Back to top

#15 Guest_gerald_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 12:53 PM

I've noticed E. evergladei to be a bit more adventurous than E. gilberti in trying out (and sometimes accepting) non-live foods.

Michael - the snail in pic #1 looks like a ramshorn (Planorbis or Planorbella) not a pond snail. Of the two groups of pond snails (Physa and Lymnaea), Physa make soft egg cases (as do ramshorns) than Elassoma can eat. Lymnaea egg cases are probably too tough.

Back to top

#16 Guest_WyRenegade_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 01:30 PM

Michael how long would you say these guys live on average? I saw somewhere that they are fairly short-lived .

Back to top

#17 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 08 May 2014 - 01:35 PM

I've noticed E. evergladei to be a bit more adventurous than E. gilberti in trying out (and sometimes accepting) non-live foods.

Michael - the snail in pic #1 looks like a ramshorn (Planorbis or Planorbella) not a pond snail. Of the two groups of pond snails (Physa and Lymnaea), Physa make soft egg cases (as do ramshorns) than Elassoma can eat. Lymnaea egg cases are probably too tough.

My bad, poor snail terminology (these are snails that come from my outside ponds, not pond snails). And to be honest, I have not actually seen them eat a snail egg, but I read it (in a book, not just the internet) and I used to see snail eggs on the glass in this tank when it was empty and then you don't see 'em anymore after you put the Elassoma in... so I kinda jumped at the correlation.

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

Back to top

#18 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 08 May 2014 - 01:41 PM

Michael how long would you say these guys live on average? I saw somewhere that they are fairly short-lived .

You are trying to get me in trouble... I know what everyone says... but life in the wild is different than life in a tank... I believe that this female was wild caught during the "Back to the Swamp" trip in March of 2012. So I am going to say that she is 3 years old. Its one of the reasons I moved them to this tank... she was in a tank with Flagfish and I was afraid I was going to loose them all... I only found her and two others... one was a small female that I done see anymore... the other was this male that was an obvious subadult... until he got put in the tank with the big female and they didnt have to compete for food as much and now he is a real man!

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

Back to top

#19 Guest_WyRenegade_*

Guests

Posted 08 May 2014 - 06:18 PM

Nope, not at all, it was simply an honest question. I don't know what everyone says about them, just saw a comment that they are typically short-lived, so I was curious as to how old yours is.

Back to top

#20 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 08 May 2014 - 06:38 PM

I was just joking... I have had several previous posts about long lived in captivity fish... like an eight year old ozark madtom that I got at the Arkansas convention.

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