Breeding Gulf Darter, Etheostoma Swaini

Hi folks,

My gulf darter, Etheostoma swaini, fired up last night and got busy. I missed capturing the "sand shake" and like a big dummy, started flash photographing (the camera was sitting there) instead of videotaping first, which kinda got the female out of the mood. The male, however, was undeterred (even though food was clearly a part of my presence lol), so I managed to get decent photos and some good video footage as well. I'll post that later, I've got to get dress up in my nuptial colors tomorrow and associated events tonight

For those of you not familiar with this species, it's fairly widely spread in Gulf drainages from the upper Mississippi delta south. If you're looking at a darter species to start with, these are a great candidate. They stay in nice color, are very easily fed, and in my experience, will spawn a couple times a year, if kept in condition. I don't know anything about the eggs and such, but it seems you'd have a couple shots at it. And I don't think they need the cold conditioning that some of the other darters will require. My back room only gets down into the upper 50's and that seems to be enough to get them back in the mood.

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Here's the male "propositioning" the female, fins errect, colors all fired up. Something you may not realize about species in subgenus Oligocephalus is that they actually go more black than anything when in the act with the female (which is suprising about brightly colored darters like rainbows and orangethroats). The colors seem to be for the other fellas. The flared fins may be more a signal to the other males to stay away, rather than a cue to the female. He's kinda washed out here, you'll see him darken back up in the next couple photos.

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Here he's trying to side mount her. He'll put his head right there on her back, and then shake his head.

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The blur here is due to the up and down head shaking and poor lighting. But I'm kinda glad it happened that way, so you could see in a photo what they're doing.


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She's had enough ("Will you pour the food in already?!?" lol) but you can see how much his head is starting to darken up. When I found them, it was jet black.

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This is a crappy picture, but you can see the mount. She gave up on me putting in food, and got back to business.

Something else I noticed (I'm editing this) is that it's curious that there are no colors in the region that would be potentially obscured by the body of the female in their courting position. Maybe that's just my imagination, but come to think of it, this area is pretty chromatically boring in all the Oligocephalus. Dunno if anyone has ever considered that.

Todd

great starting darter if you can find um
great pics and story todd

oh and is that java fern in te back?

Awesome! Was she burying at all? It looks like she was just setting there and he was all in the mood... go figure.