Sup Ya'll

[Nativefish Boy]

Im Geoff from St.Louis. I work at Petsmart. I have 4 tanks. Dispite my parents efforts to keep the number limited. They are:
55 with a 9"Bluegill( raised from 1.5&quot, a crappie and a black bullhead
20L with 5 Boseman Rainbows, 3 Austrilian rainbows and a mystery cory
10 temporairily with a Lima Shovelnose, in future a few gardeni killifish
45 soon with my Lima and what ever else.
I have had fish forever and my parents have a 29 community tank.  I have also grown up with large fish. Thats my story. 8)

[Matt Nace]

Nice Geoff,

Glad to have you aboard.  

[fishboy]

My parents tried to do the same thing only i bought one or two of my tanks wiithout them knowing for a while smiley*

                 Welcome!
                             

                                       Daniel

[ryanp15]

hey daniel ain't seen ya in a while! How did ya hide them from you parents?

Hey geoff nice to have ya here. Hope we can be of some help to ya. ;D smiley*

[fishboy]

They don't go down in the basement that often and having the livebeares have LOTS of babies so i could say that i had to get more tanks( which i actually did)is always a good reason or excuse. My Mom loves any animals , so that is also a good thing in my situation.ey*

I haven't been here for a while well bc mostly school and sports I hope i will have time to get on the net more

[colesea]

Yeah, another LFS employee! What type of retailer systems to they use over there at Petsmart?  I have felt all lonely this past year feeling like I was the only other LFS employee on the web :-).  Perhaps we can share trade secretes sometime.
~~Colesea

[dattack]

How do you keep your crappie and bluegill happy in summer months?  Don't they require cold waters?

It's kind of funny when you work at Petsmart and can look at and buy any fish but you opt for the native North American fishes.  I always wanted to keep a rainbow or brook trout in a tank but they require a lot of current and also cold water conditions.

[colesea]

Keeping native North American fish I believe is illegal. At least it is in NY. I know someone who has a trout pond instead of a koi pond though, which I thought was pretty cool. Cuts down on the mosquitos. I keep getting baby bluegills mixed in my feeder shipments though. They're awsome fish, I throw them in the turtle display for some action, the turtles can't catch 'em! They look and act like cichlids, and I watched one eat a pinhead cricket off the surface of the water once. You can buy a really expensive refrigerator unit from Marineland if you want to keep coldwater fish. I usually put a fan over the water surface, wrap some icepacks around the tank, and leave the hood up on my personal goldfish tank in the summer. Not very hi-tech, and I need a sweater box under the stand as a drip catcher, but the goldfish seem to find it effective. And I just love aquaclear powerheads!
~~Colesea

[Nativefish Boy]

in missouri it is legal to keep native fish that you have collected.  You can't sell them though, thats illegal.  My tank doesn't have a heater so the temperature stays pretty cool. Heres the cool thing-The tank is in the basement( it is heated ) and the temperature changes when the outside temperature changes. Right now it's about 69-70 F and in the summer it is about 73-76 F . Its cool cause it sort of acts like a real river.  my crappie is like a dog. It gets excited when it sees the bag from work.  He's like "mmm...fishes.." He comes up to the top of the tank and sticks his head out of the water and shoots water out when he trys to bite the bag/fish/worms/fingers.  It's funny.  I too would love to keep some trout.  I have a fluval 403 that i could stick in a tank smaller then what it rated for to get lots of current.  The bluegill, named Kumklusch( from the Simpsons), eats crikets and crayfish real good.  8)  My green sunfish i used to have was the most violent surfacing feeding fish i had.  But he got hole-in-the-head and died.I have also had orange spotted sunfish, channel cats, darters, many assorted minnows and suckers. If any has questions about native fish and there care, talk to me, i have kept them successfully for many years.

[Nativefish Boy]

oh i forgot to mention,colesea, bluegill are cichlids thats why they look and act like them.  I forgot this to, I had a largemouth bass and a rockbass for a while to.