5 replies to this topic

[Leo1234]

I was wondering how to breed and raise warmouth. How can you tell if one is male or female? What is the minimum tank size for a pair? I wanted to know so I can breed them to sell.

I have read the article and I am a little confused.

Thank you for the help

[Sean Phillips]

I'm not fully aware of California's regs but I'm pretty sure that you can't purchase native fish in the state. If you wanted to breed them and give them away that might be different but I'm not sure. I know in pa you can't sell pa native fish but you can breed them and give them away as long as they're not protected.

Males tend to be larger than females with more vivid colors and in the spring males will normally excavate a nest whether there's a present female or not which is how to be certain. For one thing though, never just have a pair of sunfish or even a trio that tends to lead to aggression issues. I'd say 6 would be an ideal breeding group with 1 male and 5 females or even 2 males and 4 females. For that many I'd do at least a 75G and have a 15 or 20 for a fry growout. To trigger spawning you'd let the temp and photoperiod decrease during the winter and then when spring comes raise those two variables and with Lepomis sunfish (assuming your females are conditioned) they almost always will spawn. After that only the male watches the eggs for about a week until they hatch and you should remove the females to another tank or she'll most likely be slaughtered be the male(s). After the eggs hatch I'd transfer the fry immediately to the growout tank and feed them microworms or baby brine shrimp 3-5 times a day until they're large enough to start eating crushed up flake.

PS, don't try to breed Lepomis for profit, they're annual Spawners and you'll most likely only get one spawn per male once a year.

[Leo1234]

you can sell natives only to someone out of state. I know you can keep natives in California, you have to buy them out of state. I will also breed darters and other things, I just am starting to breed warmouth first since I know Lepomis are usually easy to breed. For instance I can't keep my bluegill from making a nest all year long.

So far I'm going to try to breed:
Sacramento perch (probably once I have everything to start. I'm going to get some for my aquarium first then try to breed them later if they do well)
warmouth
redspotted sunfish
redear sunfish
redline darters

Let me know what you want and I will try to breed them to sell. This is only an Idea at the moment. I'm not sure that I will start be able to start selling anytime soon. I'm only going to captive breed and not collect any wild fish.

Edited by Leo1234, 18 November 2014 - 10:33 PM.

[Sean Phillips]

Cool. Where are you going to get Sacramento perch from? They're only in California and if you can't wild collect fish then that might be a problem. If you get redline darters to breed let me know, I may be interested. I'm trying to start breeding natives myself like Johnny; Rainbow; Greenside; Banded; Variegate; Blackside Darters, Dollar Sunfish, Redspotted Sunfish, multiple Shiner and Dace species, bluefin Killies, and a few others. That's after I setup my fishroom hopefully at the end of next month.

[Leo1234]

I will be getting them from a fish farm that they said that they would send me some when they get theirs to breed. I was going to get one last summer, but the Sacramento perch they had didn't breed so now I'm waiting for this summer since that is when they said they would have them for sale.

[centrarchid]

See link below. Details needed will be found there. Sexing is easy based on base of dorsal fin near rear. They are typical of most sunfishes in that they breed multiple times each year. Despite being small, larvae are easy to breed,


http://www.nanfa.org...uthspawning.pdf