Native tank plans

[alter40]

A big goal of the blog is to keep really good records of the fish and where I get them and how they behave. It really is going to be a big experiment, but I am getting some helpful information from a native forum that I found. I might even head down to State College, PA to meet up with a couple of guys to see what we can find there. That forum will also be able to help me identify what species of fish I find if I'm unable to ID them on my own.

I will post summarys of what I'm doing on MFT, but I think the more detailed info and extra pictures will probably be in the blog only.

 

[seastaar88]

definitly post pics of anything you collect. i'm very good at identifying native species

did you rinse the sand really well before adding it to the tank? might be why its so cloudy. when i had sand as my substrate, after rinsing it as well as i could, it was all settled in just a few hours with just a HOB filter.

i need to get out on a collecting trip soon, too!

 

[alter40]

I will post plenty of pictures of everything that I collect.

It looks like I'm not going to be able even start collecting until April 12th. Pretty much any water that is near me is in "trout" water and you cannot catch baitfish (minnows) or fishbait (crays, larva, etc.) out of the "trout" waters between March 1st and the start of trout season. So it might be a couple of weeks before I can actually collect anything.

Today I'm going to redo my tank though and instead of using the sand that I have in my tank now, I'm going to replace it with brown natural gravel from Walmart. I'm also going to get some rocks from a stream this afternoon to use in the tank. Hopefully I can find a piece of wood that is submerged in the water and a plant or two would be great too. I will post some pictures of my tank late tonight with my new tank setup.

 

[seastaar88]

Any progress???

 

[alter40]

Not too much progress on the larger tank at the moment. Trout season just started Saturday which means I can now go and catch minnows in just about any body of water in the state so I'm hoping to get a chance to start doing that sometime soon. I have a 10g native tank that I started up a little while ago with a link to the journal in my signature.

My semester is about over so hopefully once that is complete I can start working on getting things together for a large native tank.

 

[pwrmacG4]

sweet.. did you have to get a fishing license?

 

[alter40]

I get a fishing license every year so its not a big deal, but to answer your question yes they are required for doing this.