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Favorite Wild Fish?


PlaneFishGuy
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What's your favorite wild fish to keep? Could be wild caught or captive bred and still reasonably close to the look of the wild counterparts. Not looking to go down a genetic rabbit hole as I know that can get pretty complicated and two fish could look almost identical and be genetically different.  

I like the idea of having an aquarium with fish that you could go see in the wild and wanted to get ideas from the folks on the forum.  

Pictures would be awesome...

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I collect and keep several kinds of native fishes. One of my favorites are pygmy sunfish. I have colony that is currently breeding:

It is nice to see them in the wild and learn about what need by looking at their native environment. It is also nice to collect the native plants that they live in too.

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17 minutes ago, keddre said:

I’m going to ignore the fish and go with apple cucumber. I had it for a couple years until I moved, but I plan on getting another when I get a house next year 

1AF30B68-4C21-4570-B8E0-47771B0F8C4A.jpeg

Wow! I didn’t even know this was a thing!  Is it freshwater?

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@Daniel Love the sunfish! 🐟

Decades ago, Carolina Biological used to sell Three-Spined Sticklebacks, the N.A. fish that builds a little nest to house their eggs. I wish I had tried to start a colony of them. I believe now, they may be listed as endangered.

Three-spined_stickleback.jpg

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9 minutes ago, Lifeisgood said:

Wow! I didn’t even know this was a thing!  Is it freshwater?

No, salt. I haven’t been able to find any cool inverts in freshwater yet which sucks because I’m an invert nerm. 

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I recently saw rainbow shiners for sale. It's native to Alabama and I think it would be cool to have a tank of them. I'd have to make a river tank, though, so it's probably not going to happen, unless I suddenly find room in my house for such a thing. It's a beautiful fish, though. I found this article with beautiful photography that features Alabama's most colorful fish (and other fanciful critters and flowers as big as dinner plates.)

https://www.al.com/news/2016/05/in_the_land_of_tiny_technicolo.html

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I don't keep any natives, but I think the Rainbow Darter (Etheostoma caeruleum) is a neat little fish, and it's very common so catching a few to keep in captivity wouldn't harm any ecosystems. The Redside Dace is also another Ohio native I like. A lot of the shiners are cool too. Dang, this is making me want to do a native tank. Yet another idea to add to the list of things I want to do but probably will never do.

Edited by Deku-Corydoras
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@Deku-Corydoras Redside Dace looks awesome - almost like a native rainbow shark 

I live in the southeast (alabama) and Ive been kicking around the idea of a southeastern native community tank. I haven't deep dived too much into fish compatibility yet but the feedback on the this thread is giving me some ideas (i.e. alabama rainbow shiners and gulf coast pygmy sunfish in a heavily planted tank) 

Redside Dace.jpg

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@Colu the blue pleco is awesome - I've been out of the hobby 20 years. I look back and its hard to imagine that the internet was barely a thing then. I remember being subscribed to a ton of magazines that would show up in the mail and that was the limit of your exposure. If you pop-quizzed me back then I would have guessed that blue pleco was some sort of saltwater variant that just hadn't been featured in  "tropical fish" or 'Aquarium Fish" Magazine. 

Also that was  back when you judged how credible a magazine was by how thick and glossy the pages were...and you convinced yourself that after paying 6.99 (1.85 above minimum wage) you didn't mind the fact that 86% of the magazine was paid advertisements. 

Edited by PlaneFishGuy
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14 hours ago, Anita said:

@Daniel Love the sunfish! 🐟

Decades ago, Carolina Biological used to sell Three-Spined Sticklebacks, the N.A. fish that builds a little nest to house their eggs. I wish I had tried to start a colony of them. I believe now, they may be listed as endangered.

Three-spined_stickleback.jpg

I had seen Americans mentioning three spines sticklebacks but I hadn't looked up to see if it's the same species as we get in Europe. Turns out it is! I love watching these in the wild and have always wanted to keep some in an aquarium but there supposed to be quite tricky to keep.

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