Hello NANFA Forumites. I've been visiting for a few weeks now, reading various posts and getting loads of info and fish porn(trophy brook trout anyone? my gawd!).

I grew up in Southern CA with two younger brothers. One of our favorite pastimes as kids was to catch minnows in the local ag canals/ditches. Victims would often end up in our aquarium and above-ground swimming pool. They spanned a good range, including red shiner, mosquitofish, mollies, bluegill, bass, etc.

Later in life I had one of my brothers re-visit the keeping of native fish in a large aquarium. This infected me with my own desire for it. The species that particularly got my attention was red shiners he caught while visiting my parents where we grew up. He even got them to breed. Those were always a joy to catch when I was a kid but I never could find them here in CO. Anyways, while visiting he brought me an old 30 gal.? tank he had. That ended up housing green sunfish and 2 largemouth bass (all very small) for some time that I caught out of a reservoir (shhhh, illegal here). They quickly outgrew that tank though and I moved them to a new 55 gal. tank. They continued to grow in the larger tank until I grew tired of the care they required and released them into another local reservoir (yipes, anathema!) that already had both species. I ended up re-stocking that tank with some small tropicals a friend had to give up as she was leaving the country.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. I was in the local PetCo buying fish food for the few fish I currently keep in my 55 gal. (one very old black skirt tetra I adopted, four neon tetras, and two tiger barbs). On passing the feeder tanks I noticed they had a few more species in there than the usual goldfish and rosy reds. I noticed fatheads and gambusia and possibly a big golden shiner. After observing this tank chock full of fish for about 5 minutes I spotted a sunfish chilling up in one corner. Sweet! I bought him for 15 cents and am once again officially a native fish keeper. Since intorducing him to the tank, my neon tetras (largish for that species) have completely disappeared - doubtful that the sunfish ate them but possible I suppose. The rest are definitely too big for it to eat.

Now that I've got a CO legal sunfish, my next step is to get some red shiners, which is ultimately something I've wanted to have since I got this tank 8 years ago.

Well, that's a mouthful of introduction and background. Thanks for all the great information and such on this forum. It's been a source of motivation for sure.

Welcome Hiero. Red shiners are great aquarium fish, which is probably related to their great ability as invasives as in places like SoCal.

Red shiners are great aquarium fish, which is probably related to their great ability as invasives as in places like SoCal.

Yup, they are in all the canals. Apparently they were stocked as forage up and down the lower Colorado (source of the irrigation water in the desert where I grew up) in the early 1900's along with sportfish species. I realize they're not "native" anywhere near me, but there's a nostalgia for me.

EDIT: Read up some more on it and it seems more likely they escaped as bait of from bait farms in AZ.

Edited by Hiero, 04 December 2009 - 03:54 PM.