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Breeding red shiner?

Started by Guest_Kaleidoscope_* , Jun 20 2014 10:34 PM

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3 replies to this topic

#1 Guest_Kaleidoscope_*

Guests

Posted 20 June 2014 - 10:34 PM

I live by a creek, in an area where the city is fast encroaching on nature. I have done some netting in the creek, and found it is a full ecosystem, with sunfish, bullheads, madtoms (or baby bullheads? not sure yet), and shiners.

As the construction around the creek is very detrimental, I fear that one day, the creek may eventually be lifeless. Therefore I would like to try to spawn each species found in the creek to preserve them, if not in nature. I have already spawned sunfish, and plan to spawn bullheads, once I can dig a pond. But the next fish on the list is the red shiner (notropis lutrensis).

The males from the creek are very beautiful, but my first question is how to identify females?
I caught one male and one I thought was a female, but it was killed by the male. Does this indicate it is a different species, or just a sign that I need a higher number of females for every male? The "female" had a different body style than the male, but it was a totally silver fish I caught in the same cast of the net as the male.

Also, what setup would be ideal? I have a barn attached to my house with a cement floor, that gets very cold in the winter
Could I put a stock tank in there with a large group so they spawn in the spring?
How deep would it have to be so they don't freeze to death?

I understand they are egg scatterers, but do they scatter on plants (meaning i should have *what kind of plants?* in there?) or should I just put marbles on the bottom, or something else the eggs can fall through?

What to feed the fry?

Thanks, if anybody has examples of how they did it, I would appreciate it, I am open to doing it in an aquarium, but I have lots more space in the barn.

Edited by Kaleidoscope, 20 June 2014 - 10:36 PM.

#2 Guest_Irate Mormon_*

Guests

Posted 21 June 2014 - 01:02 AM

If there are red shiners in there, then that creek is pretty much on it's last legs.

#3 Michael Wolfe

Board of Directors

North Georgia, Oconee River Drainage

Posted 21 June 2014 - 08:38 AM

OK, lets address a few of the items above...

Irate, you should look at the home location of the poster first... Red Shiners are native in his range, so they are not an indicator of anything specific.

Kscope, I just saw a bunch of red shiners the other weekend and the females looked very much like the colored up makes in body shape, so if your were different they were likely different fish... adult females will have the same deep body and same scale shape as the makes.

I think it is great that you want to breed fish, but you should know that there is no danger of us wiping out red shiners. They are a very prolific and (here in Georgia) invasive species. But sure, they are a native to you and that's what we are all about... local fish. As far as spawning... I don't think they are egg scatterers. Most Cyprinella are crevice spawners. Look up some information on breeding other Cyprinella and I think that would help you out a lot (use the search feature here). And as far as keeping fish outside or in barns... I say yes, do it... and in OK, I think that you would not have to worry much about the weather if you did something like a 100 gallon rubbermade stock tank (like for watering livestock). I bred my Cyprinellas that way in just the back yard (and yes, I occasionally get a little ice on the tanks and the fish live fine underneath)... I would suggest you think about the benefits of natural light and natural bugs and maybe try outside stock tanks.

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