Monday, July 7, 2008

Buying an aquarium

Tomorrow I'm planning to buy a 2 month old used aquarium from a guy on craigslist. It's 29 gallons with a concave front surface and includes a hood, lights, filter, etc. I think that should be big enough to put 3 or 4 small bluegill or other sunfish and a handful of minnows. I kept green sunfish from the boneyard alive for quite a while in a 15 gallon tank (until our monster crayfish ate them!), so I think I can easily handle some bluegill. It would be pretty cool to eventually have a collection of small native fish all living together: bluegill, pumpkinseed, crappie, perch, etc.

4 comments:

Jeff Douglas said...

I think a native fish aquarium would be great fun, much more fun than the tropical fish. Good luck with that. I know a guy in Mount Horeb who has kept bluegill for years and they do very well.

T. Brook Smith said...

Good luck with the native aquarium, Ben!

I think they're just as attractive and vastly more interesting than tropical fish. Here's a piece of unsolicited advice from someone who has done this before. Sunfish are super territorial and usually beat each other up pretty badly in a tank. Give them plenty of places to hide from each other.

Ben said...

Thanks for the advice Tim. I've been reading as much as I can online and have been seeing lots of the same. Most people put too large or too many fish in a tank that isn't big enough.

I'll start out with the smallest fish I can get and make sure to have lots of plants and rocks, etc.

Ben said...

I bought it! I'm not going to get it up and running until after my trip to Japan (Aug 12-27) though. I'm moving into a new house then so there's no point in setting it up now. It looks really nice though, and should be plenty big for what I want.