5 replies to this topic

[Leo1234]

I was going to get more sunfish since I'm going to get rid of the 2 creek chubs and my goldfish. The main reason is so that I will have 6 or more sunfish so my bluegills would be less aggressive. The bluegills only chase each other.

Anyways, I was wondering If someone could list lepomis species with their aggression levels. I am looking for a less aggressive species that it won't stress out my black crappie. So far the ones I'm thinking about are pumpkinseed, redear or redspotted. Redear sunfish are one of my favorites, but I would like to get a species with color also.

Edited by Leo1234, 23 November 2014 - 03:06 PM.

[fundulus]

The three you're thinking of are pretty aggressive, especially the p-seeds. A low aggression Lepomis the orangespotted, L. humilis.

[Leo1234]

wait... redear sunfish are aggressive? what species is the least aggressive of the large ones? The propblem is I have a brown bullhead catfish so a oragngespotted wont work... Should I get more bluegills or crappie? I keep hearing that bluegills are aggressive so I thought I lucked out on getting some that won't hurt the crappie.

[fundulus]

Bluegills are often less aggressive because they're more of a schooling species than the others. Redears may work that way too, you could be lucky. If you're dealing with any centrarchids you're dealing with more or less aggressive carnivores even more than with most cichlids, with the exception being crappies.

[centrarchid]

To control aggression,consider going all on sex or another.

[FishGuyJosh]

Our mobile fish exhibit collection has two, 200 gallon tubs that hold several sunfish species mixed together. We have definitely achieved the "love in" effect of having so many fish that they don't express much aggression at all and definitely no territorial tendencies. Our collection includes bluegill, green sunfish, redears, warmouth, hybrids of all of those, black crappie, Sacramento perch, pumpkinseeds, and some pikemonnows. Mind you, we have A LOT of fish in each tank. However the practice holds true for smaller tanks too as long as you have sufficient filtration to handle higher stocking density. We use that same love-in effect on our catfish tanks.