sunfish breeding?

anyone ever had them breed in captivity? only reason i ask is I was moving some rocks around this morning in the tank and saw some fry swim out from under one. I was excited but so was all the other fish as it was feeding frenzy time, they were maybe 1/4" long so i couldnt tell which kind they were, the only ones i have more than one of is the red ears and the greens.

I had longears spawn in a large tank i had several years ago, I was renovating my house and i did not have any central a/c or heat from oct to about march or april of that year, i put the fish in that tank probably 1st of august, they spawned in march or so when it got warm, I noticed them nest building but i never saw them actually spawn, i just noticed the babies one day.

I sucked a few out and put them in a 10 gal tank but they did not make it.

I have heard that it is pretty easy to get them to spawn in tanks. Well not ALL of the sunfish but some are easy. I am hoping I can get my dollars to breed for me in about 6 months to a year.

Chad

My northern longears spawn about every other week or so and I feed the fry to my blackbanded sunfish which in turn seems to have gotten them in the mood and they spawned recently in a tank. I have also had warmouth spawn in a tank one time. I usualy just try to spawn my sunfish in outdoor ponds in the summer but I like using the longear fry as a good healthy food source for my finicky blackbandeds and it seems to be working havn't lost any of my 6 adults yet since I brought them in back in early september. The longears seem more than willing to spawn as long as the temp is a little above 72 and they are well fed. I let the male gaurd them till they hatch out then siphon them out through an old t-shirt and feed them to the black bandeds. Here is a couple pics of the longears caught in the act...
[attachment=2969:attachment]
[attachment=2970:attachment]

What is a good way to tell the sexes of your longears? I would like to try breeding longears, maybe you could give some more info on your setup.

well there realy is not a whole lot too the set up... there are 2 male and 4 females in a 40 breeder with several other sunfish and I feed them a lot of freezedried mysis and krill. There's a thin layer of gravel in the bottom and some rocks for the females and other fish to hide in when the larger male is gaurding eggs/fry because he gets prety aggressive. This would be even more of a problem with the much larger central longears. As far as sexing them I actually made up an equation as an undergrad for my senior research that works something like 95% of the time on larger longears. Ok here I looked up my old paper... I called it the Opercle Proportionality Index or OPI. Ok I had to look at this for a sec to remember how it worked...
OPI = (opercle length X Opercle width / Standard Length X Depth of the body) * 1000 If you get a number above 13 it is a male below 13 a female. Basically the higher the number the better chance it's a male and the lower the better chance it's a female. This worked best for fish over 6cm in standard length. It worked very well on larger fish 95% acurate. Basically it works because males have much larger opercle flaps than females. this is especialy true of larger central longears. If you want the full report I still have it and a powerpoint presentation on it. It actually would be very useful to someone who wants to spawn longears.

If you want the full report I still have it and a powerpoint presentation on it. It actually would be very useful to someone who wants to spawn longears.

You have a PM.

Thanks