I have 2 pumpkinseed and 2 bluegill for a year and a half with no probs other than the occasional tail nipping. I recently took the heater out and the temp fell from 78F to 75F and the aggression was noticeable. No other changes in water chemistry.I wonder if anyone has experience with these fish. there are very few sources of info online as they are not commonly kept.

I had a blue gill for a while... His name was BOB

I kept him in a goldfish tank, so it was not heated.. He was never aggressive.. He was also kept with a small perch and he was fine... It just cost me a fortune in crawlers.. LOL

i got mine to eat krill and pellets (that was tough lol). i still suppliment with worms and they love skimmer clams as a treat. The dominant male pumpkinseed is the one responsable for most of the aggression and it is directed mostly towards the other pumpkinseed which is making me think it is a breeding thing. The only change is the few degrees in water temp (which i know can mean a lot to a fish).
I love the native fish and there is only one site that has very limited info on keeping them in home aquariums. I guess its gonna be trial and era with these guys

Well good luck... You should post pics..

i know i gotta borrow wifey digital cam and learn how to do that. she had to help me put my pic up on by my name. I use a disposable camera from CVS. The girl laughs at me when i go get my film developed

LMAO!!! Are the pics that interesting??

oh yea

Capt Dave wrote:

lol! funny stuff dave. I am sure your cell phone has a camera that would work better than the CVS cam.

I have seen some videos of sunfish and bluegills; they looked pretty cool. Would like to see your fish also.

cheers

i know. I wanna show you guys. I gotta learn how to do this stuff. Before i joined this site i could barely turn a computer on. I gettinj lots of online experience with ya. Thanks

I had a sunfish in my coldwater tank when i started out in the hobby.
When i went tropical, it stayed in the tank and lived with my oscar for quite a while.
But eventually the sunfish dug a huge pit in the middle of the tank and sterted to terrorize every other fish in the tank, except for my oscar.
He claimed the whole tank as it's territory and chased all the other fish, all day long.
That aggression issue is actually what brought me to this forum, for the aggression messed up the whole atmosphere in the tank.

i ended up killing the poor fish by not reading all the advice given to me and that settled the agrression issue allright...


All i can say is,if you want the fish to get big, keep feeing it live food, such as earthworms and mealworms.
That seemed to be essential to get it to grow to it's maximum potential.
here's some pics i dug up:






and in the end of the (bad quality) vid you see him as well:


and this is my oscars first day on video, and the sunfish is even bigger then my oscar was at the time.
They got along fine and portrayed quite similar behaviour, allthough the sunfish was doing his hunting from a hide out most of the time.

good lookin pumpkinseed noddy. I got some advice that i think i gonna try. Someone told me to overstock the tank just like african cichlids. Gonna try that i think. Any thoughts??

nice pics of your sunfish Nods.

I didn't realize those guys can be so aggressive.