Crazy Ideas Lets Hear Them

[Torrean]

that dam idea sounds awesome FKNM. How did they go about firing it if you can remember. This sounds like a really neat and fairly viable way to clean rivers and streams. Please go on

 

[tmack]

i would love to catch stuff from either rivers or sea and see if it could live in a tank

V&S

I have actually done this. I went down to my local creek and caught some of the various small fishes that I could. I caught small minnows, some sunfish fry, and a tiny bullhead catfish. I kept them alive over the course of a summer and the growth out of the sunfish and the bullhead catfish were amazing. the minnows grew, but stayed quite small. I returned all back into the creek at the end of the summer, I'd say that the catfish probably at least tripled in size! I am going to investigate the minnows a bit more this summer and see if they actually might be good more permanent residents because they continued to stay quite small.

People would be amazed by the variety of small fish found in local lakes, streams and even little 2 foot wide creeks. In college I had an icthyology field course that required us to collect, identify and prepare a fish collection as a major part of our grade. I ended up with a collection of over 100 different species of fish, most of which were collected in Illinois (USA) but also from trips all the way down to Florida. My collection had everything from gambusia & wild mollies to blind cave fish. And some of the prettiest fish and most unique fish were those that we seined & netted from tiny little creeks – red bellied dace, various darters, sticklebacks, madtoms, etc. The colors on some of those little fish from small creeks would rival those seen at the lfs! Unfortunately, the colors fade very quickly when preserving the specimens in formalin. And a lot of the species from the fast flowing little creeks are difficult or impossible to keep under normal aquaria conditions. It’s really amazing what can be found in a little creek you can easily jump over!

I am actually going down to my local creek again this spring and I am going to try and net some darters they are so awsome they act alot like my bumblebee gobies, and they love bloodworms too! They are actually really cool fish and they are free!

is that legal

I'm not sure about the legality of netting small fish from creeks, but I'd think if the person wasn't collecting a protected species or netting in a protected creek or stream, it would be fine. When I was doing it we were issued collectors permits by the university. What concerned us most were those times that we were chased back over a farmer's fence by a not-so-friendly bull, or by the farmer himself! We always asked permission if the owner could be found, but it made no difference to the livestock!