North Texas Exotics

New to the Dallas area, quite familiar with the invasives down in south TX (watch Tilapia spread all over near the coast), is there anyone familiar with the North TX area that knows if there are any local exotics beginning to take root (last 10 yrs or so, not the stuff like carp that are well established) ...just curious as to what might be up here
-Barrett

Try a search using the U.S. Geological Survey NAS database. You can search by watersheds, states, taxa, etc. Pretty quick and painless.

Not exactly an answer to your question, but for the sake of curiousity, go the TP&W web site and find the "stocked fish" page and scroll through the insanely long list of bizarre species the state has stocked and where they stocked them. Somebody down there was playing Mad Scientist and just trying whatever crazy species or hybrid that came to mind.
According to the site, they've seen the light and are backing away from such practices. I'm sure, like most states, they'll continue with the main stream exotics like florida largemouth, stripers etc.

Not exactly an answer to your question, but for the sake of curiousity, go the TP&W web site and find the "stocked fish" page and scroll through the insanely long list of bizarre species the state has stocked and where they stocked them. Somebody down there was playing Mad Scientist and just trying whatever crazy species or hybrid that came to mind.
According to the site, they've seen the light and are backing away from such practices. I'm sure, like most states, they'll continue with the main stream exotics like florida largemouth, stripers etc.

link?

link?

http://www.tpwd.stat...ock_state.phtml

Yeah those of us in TX have known for a long time that our local parks and wildlife have traditionally been all about the angler and hunter, the wildlife and the ecosystems come second; but I think they've been getting MUCH better in the past 10 yrs or so. TPWD has come under fire for quite a few squirrelly things they've done in the past, like stocking all these species (peacock bass!! WTF!?!?), and launching massive red drum restocking programs without any accompanying tagging programs to see what effect they were having...but luckily for us fish nerds in TX they haven't done anything really insane recently, and actually have done quite a good job banning a few exotic spp. common in the pet trade (thank goodness, though at the aquarium I work at I still get at least one call a week from someone wanting to donate a pacu or nurse shark) It really has cut down on the amount of piranha and FW rays in the pet trade, though people who really want them will just go across state lines. I think they should probably go a bit further on the "lunker" exotics like pacu, pangaisius cats, sharks, and red-tailed cats, just to name a few.

A colleague of mine at another aquarium recently told me the reason he has three pacu swimming in his displays of native game fish is b/c in each case the person told him when their donation offer was refused "oh, well I've tried everywhere else, guess I'll just have to release them" ...the ignorance of the public is quite scary on this issue.

When living in Galveston, TX I personally saw on two occasions (right after Finding Nemo came out) a clownfish dying on the bottom near a pier at a local park, and on a third occasion found the remnants of what I believe was a percula clownfish in the gut of a black drum...truly frightening. In the most extreme case of ignorance I've ever seen I ended up flying off the handle at a local mega-mart (guess which one) employee when I heard him tell a woman "yeah, these fish [oscars] will be small enough for your 30 gallon tank for a few years, after that you can just donate them to an aquarium or let them go" ...scary and sickening.

Anyway, thanks to all that have replied to this topic, trying to learn my local freshwater habitats now that I'm landlocked after so many years of working in saltwater!