first time native fish keeper

Hello everybody,

I just wanted to introduce myself. I have been keeping aquariums on and off for many years, usually tropical fish, heavily planted. Recently, I started looking into keeping fish from north America, specifically my home state of VA. I have decided to keep pumpkinseed sunfish in my new 75 gallon corner flow aquarium.

Because this is my first time keeping these fish, I hope to learn a lot from all the veterans here. I haven't decided what I will do for plants yet, but my substrate will be a potting soil capped with pool sand and lots of various sizes pebbles and stones from the river. I also have some large driftwood pieces to put in there.

I need to research what plants are native to lakes and rivers in VA.

Well, there you have it. I look forward to interacting with you guys.

Take care,

Kevin

Welcome to the forum, Kevin. There is indeed a lot one can learn here in NANFA. I kept a tiny pumpkinseed years ago, and he killed everything in the tank that went in with him, even bigger stuff, except for one stonecat. Real pretty, and cool fish. As that is the bulk of my experience, I'll leave actual advice to others more experienced than I. Quite a few VA folks on here, I'm sure they'll happy to provide pointers too.

Welcome to the forum, Kevin.

You might want to confine the soil to plants in pots, rather than covering the whole tank bottom with soil. Once the sunnies mature and start digging nests you're gonna have a muddy mess otherwise. I'd use either strong-rooted plants like Vallisneria, or plants that can grow free-floating (hornwort, Elodea canadensis, Najas guadalupensis, ...

Gerald,

I took your advice. No soil in this tank. I decided to get some lsmocote and make root tabs for the plants.