Posted 06 January 2008 - 09:53 PM
Tule perch do best in a cooler tank with good flow, -if- they are caught very small. The few adults I've had never seemed to adjust to tank life, being extremely skittish, banging into the tank walls, and eventually succumbing to stress related symptoms.
When I lived in the central valley (15 years ago or so), a neighbor boy brought over a tule perch he'd caught that was squirting out babies into his creel. I put the fish and surviving babies in the quarantine tank, the female continue to pop out little tule perch, then died. I'd already given up on keeping tule perch in a tank at that point.
I ended up with about 12 juvenile tule perch, which I added to a tank (without much hope). As it turned out, they did very well for several years, and adjusted to flake without any problems.
They tended to hang out next to the filter return flow, shooting out to snatch bits of whatever got caught in the wash.
I'd bet they would do well in a cool riffle tank with darters.
Rick