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As beautiful as a discus?! I just discovered the beautiful Longear Sunfish. Anyone keep them?


HenryC

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I'm blow away! How come I just discovered these? 😮

Does anyone keep these? Now I NEED a longear sunfish tank! Any recommendations on size and number of fish?

These colors are unreal! How come sunfish are not mentioned more in the hobby? It's like looking at a high end discus! Are they pricey? Any seller you guys recommend? Tankmates?

They should be more popular with a color like these right? So what's the catch haha, are they illegal? Super hard to keep? Mega pricey?

I must have them!

Edited by HenryC
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They are a native north american species, so they get ignored by a vast majority of fish keepers (in the US, atleast) because "Oh, that's just a regular back yard fish" ignoring that any species we keep is from someone's back yard.  From what I've seen looking at them previously, they are probably going to want cooler water than a lot of tropical species, as their native range extends from northern Mexico to southern Canada.  They also get moderately large (6 inch body length, with record wild caught getting up close to 9.5 inches), so you'd want a larger aquarium to accommodate them.  Best bet would probably be a species tank, unless you want to get into experimenting with possible roommates yourself.  Feeding, you'd probably need to do lots of frozen/freeze dried/live food at first, and see if you could push them over towards prepared food in the long run.  Overall, I'd wager they probably take care similar to any larger cichlid species but with slightly cooler water.

Sadly, for most north american native species, they aren't super well kept in the hobby, so there simply isn't a lot of wisdom out there on how to care for them.  You might also run into state/local rules that limit your ability to keep native species in your care.  Which is a shame, because there are a lot of cool native north american fishes that would be awesome to keep in tanks.  But, native species tend to be expensive and difficult to keep because it is so niche, so people stay out of it.

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In addition to Sachs, you can try Jonahs Aquarium and Zimmerman's, both specialize in native fish. I'd email them directly with your inquiry to get the most recent stocking and pricing. They can be bought fairly inexpensive, and if you buy a group it makes shipping less per fish. Also where North American Native Fish Association (NANFA) is a great resource on all things native to North America. Here are a few things on sunfish that I found on their site:

http://www.nanfa.org/fif/longear.shtml

http://www.nanfa.org/articles/acgreen.shtml

http://www.nanfa.org/ac/sunfish-bass-in-aquariums.pdf

 

 

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@HenryC I see on your profile that you live in Mexico. I imagine shipping live fish from the US would be expensive and a hassle. However, many species of sunfish occur naturally in Northeastern Mexico, so if you really want to keep these fish, you could try taking a trip and catching some for yourself, depending on what part of the country you live in. Here's an interesting website I found listing fish native to Mexico with a list that includes 5 species of sunfish: https://mexican-fish.com/fish-alphabetical-index-by-common-names/

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2 hours ago, Nature Coast Aquariums said:

Another thing to keep in mind is a down side of most North American fish, The fish in that pic is in full breeding dress. It will be significantly less colorful most of the year.

I’ll second that and add that many common Cichlids have similar coloration but are easy to find. 
But I do agree the Sunfish are amazing and under appreciated fish. 

F3F2B39C-CFD0-4DC9-991B-F64A65CA32DF.jpeg

Edited by Patrick_G
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1 minute ago, Patrick_G said:

I’ll second that and add that many common Cichlids have similar coloration but are easy to find. 
But I do agree the Sunfish are amazing and under appreciated fish. 

F3F2B39C-CFD0-4DC9-991B-F64A65CA32DF.jpeg

Stunner! What fish?

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5 minutes ago, HenryC said:

Stunner! What fish?

Haha, just a random Cichlid pic from the web. I’m not sure but I think it’s a Jewel Cichlid. 
If you haven’t checked out the dwarf Cichlids, they’re worth a look too. 
 

German Blue Ram pic by Aquarium Coop 

E11ECE11-FA9F-45D1-9EA9-49BCFDB285E2.jpeg

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3 minutes ago, Patrick_G said:

Haha, just a random Cichlid pic from the web. I’m not sure but I think it’s a Jewel Cichlid. 
If you haven’t checked out the dwarf Cichlids, they’re worth a look too. 
 

German Blue Ram pic by Aquarium Coop 

E11ECE11-FA9F-45D1-9EA9-49BCFDB285E2.jpeg

The rams are beautiful, sadly I have no luck with them cause my water is extremely hard, and I don't want to get into RO systems and mixing water and such hehe. I do have Bolivians though! More resistant for sure.

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On 5/18/2021 at 2:07 AM, BIG GREEN said:

I would suggest avoiding this store unless you manage to contact them beforehand.  I just started a complaint with paypal over an order that I placed over a month ago.  I have tried calling and emailing several times now with no response.  The yelp page shows two reviews and both mention never receiving orders they had paid for. 

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  • 7 months later...

As a kid, I would catch them fishing and always kept a tank of four or five. They are super active (have a good lid) and will eat any other fish they can get in their mouth. The have great color when breeding, but are much duller most of the time. They have really interesting personalities. Also I didn’t have to run a heater, which is good, because I’m sure they would’ve smacked it at feeding time. Good luck!

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On 12/30/2021 at 4:09 PM, TheBlueBeetle said:

As a kid, I would catch them fishing and always kept a tank of four or five.

I used to catch and eat them (mostly bluegill and pumpkinseed) as a kid. I always wanted to keep some where I could watch them, but they were too big for our little tanks or rain barrels.

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I used to catch these and other sunfish such as, bluegills, green sunfish, red ear, longear and pumpkinseed in local waterways. 

They are actually what got me into the hobby believe it or not! I was such a big fan of fishing for these guys I got a 65g marineland as my 1st ever tank to place some wild caught ones in to study their habits and traits. 

I had success keeping between 3-5 in said tank depending on their size. They are territorial when breeding but not aggressive to each other and therefore like to be in community “shoals” for the aquarium environment. 

True Bluegills always seemed to get the largest and I would grow out some big bulls to then stock my neighborhood pond with. 

The pumpkinseed and green sunfish were the smallest and you could easily do 5/6 in  a 40 breeder+ sized tank.

I had to always exclusively feed them live crickets and worms and once that would get established would take frozen food and some flake. 
 

I never used a heater for these guys because they can survive below freezing temps outside and this allowed them to be more peaceful since it wasn’t warm enough to usually trigger spawning outside of sometimes August down here in Texas.

I had larger stone sized gravel substrate a large and multi branch tangled spider wood piece in the middle with river rocks around the base and built caves on each back corner with a canister filter.

Hope this is helpful and feel free to message me anytime about keeping sunfish!

 

might have grammatical errors will reread later for potential edits.

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  • 2 years later...

I'm late to the party, but just wanted to chime in. Yes, North American sunfishes (38 species) are gorgeous, and although only distantly related to the cichlid family (around 2,000 species), they do look and act a lot like them due to convergent evolution. Some have been fairly popular in the aquarium trade for years, like the large pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus), as well as the smaller Enneacanthus species, and the tiny Elassoma species. Bigger sunfishes (like largemouth bass and others) are similar to peacock bass and other big, predatory cichlids, and need just as much space and food. However, there are plenty other beautiful and interesting sunfishes, like the longear above (L. megalotis), which deserve way more attention from aquarists.

Myself, I have kept bluegill (L. macrochirus), green sunfish (L. cyanellus), and spotted sunfish (L. punctatus), as well as the little bluespotted sunfish (Enneacanthus gloriosus). The bluegill get big (around a foot in length), and are fairly aggressive with each other, so they need at least a 75-gallon tank. Green sunfish are not quite as big (usually 6-8 inches), but they are among the most aggressive fish I've ever kept, often times becoming a lone aquarium specimen, the way some cichlids do. They are very interesting, very aware of people and things outside their tank, and have some great colors of their own, but don't keep them unless you are prepared for their aggression. Spotted sunfish are smaller and not nearly as aggressive. You can keep them in a group, and they generally get along with each other. They also have some great behaviors, and some cool colors and patterns, too. My bluespotted sunfish was beautiful, and reminiscent of dwarf cichlids. I had one in a 10-gal tank with a swamp darter (Etheostoma fusiforme), a tiny member of the perch family (250 species), and like all darters, a really cool aquarium fish in its own right. My friend also used to keep orangespotted sunfish (L. humilis), which are also very colorful and rather peaceful.

I think all these sunfishes and others make great aquarium denizens, and in some ways are easier to keep than tropical fish. You don't need a heater, and unless you want to breed them, they don't need a winter cool-down period, either. As stated in a previous post, I think a big factor keeping them from becoming more popular here in North America is that they're local and not exotic, since aquarists in Europe really like them. However, to be fair, there are concerns both in North America and Europe about these fish become invasive if released into the wild, since unlike tropical fish, they can survive the winter and go on to compete with and/or prey on other fish.

Edited by AtomicSunfish
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