Photo Album

Tips on keeping sunfish and Bluegills in aquariums

Photo Album

Last week I picked this large bull snail up at a local lake. The water had dropped leaving this fellow laying out 10 feet out of water in the direct sun. So I took it home and put it in my tank hoping it was still alive, and Voila! Out of hibernation it came..... See the next photo one week later.

This snail is the size of a golf ball. BIG!

I call this a bull snail because of the very large "horns", antennae. Whether that is the real name for this species I do not know.

One week later, same big bull snail plus 4 wee little bull snails(2 are on parent's shell in back). These were born overnight and are the size of a large green pea at birth.

Snails are hermaphrodites(both sexes in one)and reproduce when the food is abundant. Great thing is, these snails eat flake food!

Here's a banded darter fish. The darters are the smallest members of the perches. Family Percidae.

This is a more mature male banded darter. The colors are incredible and rival those of tropical fish.

This darter is a rainbow darter. They are one of the more colorful darters of Ohio. This one is an adult and will get more brightly colored during mating season.

North American fishes of the wild provide a neat and entertaining aquarium setting and can come in a dazzling array of color variations, as you will see on this photo page. I have 2 green sunfish, a Western blacknose dace(hard to photograph), 2 banded darters and 2 rusty crayfish. The green sunfish seems to have alot of color variations and a short, thick , bass-like body. This one is mostly tannish yellow with alot of neon blue spots and streaks on the gill plates.

This is my smaller green sunfish. As you can see in this picture, it is a rather heavy bodied fish similar to the rock bass and has the normal bass large diameter mouth.These fish have great gill plate coloration! No fish gill plate pattern is alike.

This is another closeup of the largest sunfish I have. At the current time, he is 5-6 inches long. When I caught him he was only 3/4" long.

This is my male rusty crayfish. He's the escape artist and got out. Fortunately I found him in time and was able to get him back into the tank. Took a few days for him to recover his mobility and sense though.