Last night and today I finally saw a couple of the mud minnows actually out of hiding and swimming around!  They mostly like to hide under the spray bar, or in the floating plants.

I haven't seen them eat yet, but I've been putting bloodworms on the floating plants for them so they stand a chance against the log perch and darters.

They're shy little guys so far.  Yes, they are muddy colored, but when you take the time look at them you can see they have some interesting patterning.

People's reactions have been so interesting.  My Sis-in-law thought I was kidding when I told her they were all caught locally.  I know I'm a big geek, but I enjoy the eye-opening is as much as I do the fish themselves. 

can u get a pic? and how hard is it to start a native tank???

The ones we caught were central mudminnows.  I received some eastern mudminnows in the mail yesterday.  I now have all the mudminnows I could ever want!  Woo hoo! 

The larger ones are coming out and looking around and eating when the ill-mannered sunfish lets them.  He may go back in the ten gallon for a time-out.  The little pike is eating, too.  He knows I'm food person already. 

The lights are out and I can see the mudminnows swimming around.  I fed the sunfish (I call him Lugs) into a contented stupor to give the other fish some peace.

Native tanks are easy.  They are just like tropical tanks with no heater.  Some fish need current provided by a power head.  Other than that, all the other rules apply.  You have to identify the fish before you take it home, you need to know if it's legal to keep, if you can care for it & it won't outgrow your tank.

animefan93 said :

can u get a pic? and how hard is it to start a native tank???

It isn't hard toget one started at all.  What Susan said is right on- just need to make sure you know what you caught(so you don't bring home something that is endangered, or that will get too big, or eat everybody else in your tank) and they don't eat flake food so you'll have to get blood worms or mysiss shrimp or something.

I have pix of mine up under the thread 75gal native tank, if you want tos ee what mine looked like before I got the plants.  FarmerTodd posted a thread with some really awesome pix. Do a message board search for : "Burn your eyes out green" and you'll find those!

As you gals are finding out, the mudminnow are pretty shy at first.  Once they get hungry, tho, they'll get way less shy.  You've had them a week now?  They seem to be right about on course. 

Even still, with all my plants and stuff I would really only see them 1 in 3 feedings, and typically on the first feeding after a break.  That could be viewed as a bad thing, but I always enjoyed seeing them more that way when I did see them.  I like surprises.  Which is why I loved keeping pirate perch.  Unfortunately, Ohio has a new law that disallows keeping any extirpated species (which are considered Endangered).  It's a bunch of crap in that regard (this isn't a recent extirpation), but whatever.  Not worth the $1000 fine per animal in the extremely rare (like, unheard of) event that someone got investigated.

Todd

I'm not seeing much of the small 1" ones.  I'm a little worried about them.  They are in a separate tank from the big ones we caught.  There is lots of cover, and I keep trying to put lots of food in the cover, but there are some hungry bluefin killies, bluespotted sunfish, flagfish, and swamp darters in there.

The big mudminnows are out all the time, taking food away from the grass pickerel.  It took them about two days to get bold as brass.  The longear sunfish herds them all around in an effort to get them to leave his territory.  I may have to move the pickerel someplace less competitive.

The mudminnows are fine in the community tank.  Hunger will overcome fear for that species.

Pickerel, however, do not do that great in community tanks.  If you can get him to a size where you can feed him worms in a separate 5 or 10 gallon, he'd do just fine with some big mudminnows, because they're for the most part, gape limited.  Sunfish will never work with him, nor will greedy minnow species.   Pickerel are like suckers, they do best when you leave food laying around for awhile. 

Todd

I'll definitely find a quieter place for the pickerel to live.

farmertodd said :

As you gals are finding out, the mudminnow are pretty shy at first.  Once they get hungry, tho, they'll get way less shy.  You've had them a week now?  They seem to be right about on course. 

Even still, with all my plants and stuff I would really only see them 1 in 3 feedings, and typically on the first feeding after a break.  That could be viewed as a bad thing, but I always enjoyed seeing them more that way when I did see them.  I like surprises. 

They are such still little fish!  They'll just hover motionless.  The only other fish I've seen do that are the darters, hawkfish and gobies, but they are still ON something.  The Mud Minnows just sort of hover in midair...err midwater in the tank.

I'm looking forward to getting some more species in there.  I'm also getting impatiient for my plants to GROW already.  They ARE showing growth, I can see in just one week that they've put on new growth.  I'm going to get some bigger plants as soon as I can.