10g North American Native Nano-fish Tank

I also have some Red Cherry Shrimp and 3 Golden Mystery Snails as a non-native cleanup crew. I had several grass shrimp at one point, but I don't think there are any left. The L. goodei do occasional hunt (successfully) the RCS.

minorhero said:

Nice tank! I love keeping native species. How do the sunfish deal with the other species? I have thought of keeping those guys before but I always see them in species only tanks.

@Beetlejuice, you can either go out and catch your own local to you (depending on local laws) or you can buy from places like Jonah's Aquarium, Zimmerman's Fish, or occasionally aquabid.

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Originally I had the sunfish in their own planted tank as I was trying to get them to breed. They mostly hid among the plants. I combined them with the other fish in this tank, and they still mostly hide in the plants. I haven't had success yet with them breeding. I'll see one or two around the bottom of the tank often enough, searching for food - I feed them microworms, and the other tank inhabitants also get crushed flake. I had two white worm cultures going for a while, but couldn't get the cultures to reproduce fast enough to keep up with feeding. I also had trouble with the white worms in that I had to target feed each fish to make sure that one or two fish didn't eat up all of the worms before the others had a chance. With just the white worms, it wouldn't be possible to keep the other fish in a tank with the sunfish, but with the microworms, there's always enough food to go around. The sunfish seem to get along fine though. I also only see the darter occasionally. I saw the darter more often before the plants grew in more.

I'd like to try breeding the sunfish again in a species only setup sometime, if I can get a tub setup in the yard over the summer.

My phone camera isn't great, but here's an update. Tank is still running well 21 months later. I sold some of the H. formosa in a local club auction, though I still have some offspring from the original colony in there. The pygmy killies and the bluefin killies unfortunately have passed, but they were WC and so I don't know how old they were. I didn't see any evidence of disease. They weren't picky eaters, took to flake food readily. My favorite fish in the tank, the swamp darter, still seems healthy as ever, and not a picky eater in the least! I've added some golden white clouds to the tank, they like to spend the summer outdoors in a tub, so this is their winter home.