New guy from minnesota

Hey I am Justin and have I couple questions about native fish and what I have. I just got a couple of native fish but I am not sure what they are, they look like Bluegills or smallmouth bass to me. Heres a couple pics....



...sorry the pics aren't the best, but hopefully someone can give my an idea.

Will native fish just eat flake food, or normal pellets? These guys are just in a 10gal for now, but later this summer I am hoping to turn my 75gal into a native tank and get more fish. Currently my 75 has 7 Piranhas that will be transferred into a 300 gallon stock tank sometime soon.

Thanks Justin

Where did you catch it? Start by updating your profile with your location information. And if you did not catch it locally, tell us where you caught it.

It's hard to tell with that glare. It seems a little too long and slender to be a bluegill. But then again juveniles do tend to be more long and slender than adults. It could be a bluegill. I'm sure others will weigh in.

As far as food goes, you will get a number of good answers from others here. I use freeze dried, and supplement with occasional live food for treats and a varied diet.

I think the "Questions? Bugs? Comments?" section of the forum is for questions, bugs, and comments about the forum itself, not about fish. This question probably should be posted to "Captive Care Discussion" or "Identification Assistance", maybe "Sunfish and Basses".

It was caught in the Minnesota river. Sorry about posting in the wrong place I wasn't sure where to post. The setup of this fourm is very hard to read through posts. Why cant I view everyones response at the same time? rather than having to click on each reply to view them. Is there a way I can change this so I can view all replys at the same time?

Thanks Justin

Upper right, Options, change it do standard layout.

The fish looks like an orangespotted sunfish, Lepomis humilus.

It should eat raw market shrimp, frozen foods like bloodworms, or even earthworms.

Justin,

It's an orangespotted sunfish, Lepomis humilus. They're one of the smaller sunfish and do really well in aquaria. I've maintained them on frozen bloodworms, but you should be able to get them to switch over to freeze-dried. If you poke around on the Web you should be able to find lots of info on captive care of these. Of course, if you were to join NANFA, you'd get a really slick periodical, American Currents, which usually has lots of fun info on keeping fish like those...

Cheers,
Dave

I have orange spot sunfish in my 125 gal planted tank, they eat floating pellets, frozen blood worms, shrimp etc.

when sunfish are small they do well on frozen blood worms, and they are easy to keep

Sounds good, thanks for the help guys. I am glad to find out what I actually have. Its nice to see such as active fish forum too. Native fish FTW.