Let's Talk Silversides

[Dave Legacy]

I always see these guys frozen for feeding purposes in the LFS freezer, but what about keeping them in the home aquarium as pets? I was reading this thread on another forum about a guy who bought 90 marine silversides from a place in Florida, USA to put in his 300G Grouper tank. This peaked my interest so I looked it up on Fishbase.org and found that they list at least 30+ species on there.

Looks like Atlantic Silversides(Menidia menidia) might work out because they tend to inhabit estuaries. Sounds like they live in temperatures that vary from 2-33C. Anybody try out silversides or similar minnow like fish in your mid-range brackish tanks?

- Dave

 

[nmonks]

Dave --

There already are some silversides (Atheriniformes) sold to hobbyists: The various types of Australian, Celebes, and Madagascar rainbowfish. So there's no intrinsic reason why silversides can't be kept in aquaria.

Estuarine coldwater fish can certainly be kept in aquaria, too. I've kept plaice and gobies, for example, without problems in tanks at room temperature. Grey mullet have been kept by others and are quite commonly seen in public aquaria. A few species will make the change to tropical conditions, but the problem tends to be that coldwater fish find the oxygen concentrations in tropical tanks too low, even if they tolerate high temperatures in the wild.

Be cautious when reading the temperature scales: these refer to maximum and minimum temperatures, and will be dependent on season. This fish never lives in water routinely down to 2 degrees C, for example, because even the Antarctic Ocean doesn't get that cold. Similarly, 30 degrees is warmer than the Red Sea, let alone the Atlantic coast of the United States, so this isn't in their normal range either. The actual temperature preferred by this fish will be somewhere between the two, probably around 15 C, given it's habitat in the wild.

My guess would be that these fish will not do well in an aquarium because they are open water, high metabolism fish. You could certainly try, I just wouldn't put any money on it.

Cheers,

Neale