E. zonatum pics

Here are a couple of photos of an E. zonatum I caught out of Clear Creek (Brazos drainage). I have 5, and I'm proud to say (er... brag) that they are now eating from my hand.

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Edited by rjmtx, 04 November 2008 - 10:32 PM.

Awesome shots! Thanks for sharing. What are you hand feeding them?

There it is! I meant to respond to this yesterday. Nice shots of the zonatum. Are these the special ones you talked about before?

Yep, those are the ones I have questions about...

The only food I add to the tank are bloodworms. They taste so good that a hand in the tank doesn't bother the fish for the most part. I just have to drop the small Fundulus a clump so he doesn't hog the hand space. The tank is a "live" tank with all plants and substrate pulled from the San Marcos river. The Elassomoa are keeping the snails in check; at least the popultion isn't growing. THere are a bunch of grass shrimp, too. I'll take a kick net out to the river every once in a while and pick some inverts to toss into the tank. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed hoping that no small hellgrammites hitched a ride to the tank on a clump of plants.

I'm heading out on a journey through East Texas this weekend, so a slack-water loving darter might find its way into my tank, too.

So far there are five pygmy sunfish, a blackstripe topminnow, and a tadpole madtom in the tank. The topminnow and catfish are each a little over an inch. The only time I see all of them is feeding time, and all of the fish seem to be doing fine in their 5 gallon. I'm pretty much trying to recreate the habitat I caught them in (minus the major predators with or without backbones), which consisted of ~1 cubic foot of sumbmerged/emerged veg and roots just crawling with life. THe only one I'm a little weary of is the madtom. He's too small to do any damage for now, but if he gives the pygmies any trouble I have other places for him (that aren't a jar of formalin, surprisingly). I'll put money on him outgrowing the tank before he eats any fish in there.

On the rate that these Elassoma are growing, I bet they'll get to be big (for a pygmy), and the factors keeping them small on the edge of their range are purely environmental.

Edited by rjmtx, 06 November 2008 - 08:13 AM.