The Fish Room...

I love the tank and the fish room!!! Hopefully soon, I will be able to order a new collection from you.(Rays of Sunshine)

I originally planned on making it a little taller which would have been almost 300 gallons but due to the fact I would have needed a whole extra sheet of acrylic I went with 8ft x 2ft and only 20 inches high building the whole thing out of 2 sheets. The ends were cut out of the center of the top piece forming a solid piece for the top to help hold the whole thing together with two center braces. Turned out to be 199.7 gallons... I have a fluval fx5 canister filter on it along with a Hydor Koralia Evolution 1400 water mover. I also have an air pump on the tank and I placed an air stone directly under the water mover which causes it to draw in air and spit out a plume of very fine bubbles making a lot of current and really oxygenating the water too.

I also have an air pump on the tank and I placed an air stone directly under the water mover which causes it to draw in air and spit out a plume of very fine bubbles making a lot of current and really oxygenating the water too.

Is this noisy? I've been keeping bubbles away from my power heads as I don't like the noise they make.

Is this noisy? I've been keeping bubbles away from my power heads as I don't like the noise they make.

It is noisier than running it without the air bubbles but it is not nearly as noisy as the traditional powerheads with the air line attached to them.

How do you feed a gar in a tank full of sunfish?

How do you feed a gar in a tank full of sunfish?

Very carefully... It actually is pellet trained but the sunfish are much quicker at getting to the pellets so you have to fill them up good, hence why they are all so fat. On top of that I feed them frozen raw shrimp from the grocery store and the gar will take those from my hand. Again though the sunfish must be stuffed first so I can actually get the food to the gar. The gar has gotten much more aggressive at feeding and does come right out in front snapping its beak for the food in with all the sunfish. It has also learned to run and hide when it gets a good sized chunk of shrimp. I also have to hand feed the two madtoms in the tank, they both are always in the same hollow log so I can just put a piece of shrimp at the opening and it gets sucked in right out of my hand.

Very carefully... It actually is pellet trained but the sunfish are much quicker at getting to the pellets so you have to fill them up good, hence why they are all so fat. On top of that I feed them frozen raw shrimp from the grocery store and the gar will take those from my hand. Again though the sunfish must be stuffed first so I can actually get the food to the gar. The gar has gotten much more aggressive at feeding and does come right out in front snapping its beak for the food in with all the sunfish. It has also learned to run and hide when it gets a good sized chunk of shrimp. I also have to hand feed the two madtoms in the tank, they both are always in the same hollow log so I can just put a piece of shrimp at the opening and it gets sucked in right out of my hand.

Brian i just needed to say how i have enjoyed this build journal.
thank's for the updates.


ps this is my kinda man cave for sure

Man, hand-feeding a gar that you've trained to be aggressive is sure to be a good plan for the long run

Gorgeous tank. I love that green sunfish. I didn't notice if you mentioned it, but do you have only one male of each of the species or do you keep several males of each? I know conspecific aggression can be ugly with some of those fish, was that ever an issue?

This is a tad off topic but do you ever sell adults through your store?

There are 4 male longears in the tank but other than those it is 1 of each on the sunfish. I do not have aggression problems now, there was a little bit of scuffeling when they first all went in and things get stirred up a bit if I add a new fish but for the most part that doesn't last long. They work out between one another who's spot in the tank is who's and then that is about it. Sure they still chase one another some from time to time but because there are so many fish in there no one fish can get picked on too much. You just have to have a complex habitat (lots of hiding places and structures to break up line of sight) and enough individuals to keep them from being able to set up large territories in the tank. I also have not had much of a problem using this method with large groups of all one species. My breeding groups are kept in 75 gallon tanks over the winter and I sometimes have as many as 15 adults in one tank for smaller forms of longears, dollars, orangspotted, and bantam sunfish.

Every once and a while I sell an extra adult or two to someone who asks but I typically do not grow out or keep around very many extra fish of each species than what I need to keep my breeding stock going. Some species that are available locally I don't even keep much of a breeding group on hand I just go catch new ones as needed and never even try to grow out any young for those species.

Have you ever thought of doing a "tour" of the fish room with a video camera? I'm looking for ways to make mine more efficient and would love to see what you have going.