Hi, my name is robs. I'm addicted to shrimp of questionable quality. Oh, my God. It feels so great to finally say that. Last week, I lost five shrimp. And you know what I realized? I hit rock bottom when I found myself Frenchly digging through a back alley dumpster looking for a discarded laptop to order replacement shrimp when I could have just originally ordered shrimp from Joe shrimp shack.com. So from the comfort of my own laptop, I'm going to go to Joe shrimp shack and order some shrimp and not dig in a dumpster anymore.
Joe shrimp shack.com. Stop digging in dumpsters. A couple more things to tell you guys about. We now have our new merch store that is just fully launched. We worked hard on it. We got some new designs. We got a certified aquarium guy. Certified aquarium gal for you ladies. We also have the punch yourself in the throat shirts making fun of antlers of their feeder guppies guys. Check it out. Even fluke yourself shirts. Check it out. We put a lot of work into it. Use promo code. robs, Adam or Jimmy at checkout for 5% off. Just choose who's your favorite aquarium guys host. We do have a competition amongst ourselves, so of course I'm the best. R-O-B-B-Z-5 off. Gifts of merch. One more thing is the bashir handbook is now out. We certainly have the link in the descriptions. Wonderful handbook. They are doing pre orders. I believe if you're a cool kid, you can even get it signed. I don't know if that's still going on or not, but it's $33 us. Certainly. Check it out. The bashir handbook. We had Josh on the podcast before. Wonderful book. Finally. Glad it's getting out. Let's kick that podcast. Welcome to the aquarium guys podcast with your hosts Jim colby and Rob goldson. Welcome to the party, ladies and gentlemen. Jimmy.
Yes.
Are you ready?
Oh, I'm so ready.
We're now under lockdown in Minnesota for another four weeks. High five.
High five.
I get to do the same as I was doing before. Coronavirus is not it staying at home, working from home. Well, today I got to give a shout out to Peter the sunfish guy. We've had a bunch of different requests from people because the popularity of keeping sunfish have been rising everywhere. But this episode is going to be wholeheartedly on sunfish. And if you need to know, sunfish, it's a genre of cichlids in North America that we have in local waterways that taste delicious.
They're dandy delicious.
They are what we call panfish in North America. But now people are seeing that pumpkin seeds, blue gills, and others are looking beautiful, especially in European aquariums. So, Peter, the sunfish guide, this episode is for you and all the others have requested it, but we are proud to have mandy from the Minnesota DNR back on again to talk about sunfish. How you doing, mandy?
I'm great, thanks for having me back.
It's our pleasure. You've been demanded back. She said that was hesitation. Did you get that nervousness?
Thanks a lot, guys.
Feel the nervousness.
Thanks. I think you guys are a lot of fun. I love what you're doing, and it's great to be involved and kind of broaden your horizons a little bit in a different area. And I think it's great. I'm happy to be here.
Hey, Rob.
All fish people need to stay together, even the ones that make us buy fishing licenses, because we should take care of her natural resources.
Remember the one rule she had last rule? One rule she gave us last time, don't get me fired.
Oh, I thought it was don't get me fired. I thought it was don't touch the mounted animals in the office.
Yeah, quit licking the quit licking the animals.
I will not give you bigfoot secrets. Don't cut the animals and don't get me fired. So, yeah, that's about it.
Oh, I have so many bigfoot questions. I really do.
Well, I am your host, Rob Zulson.
I'm Jim colby.
And I'm Adam on the shark.
Jimmy yes. I've had a fun week. I went to our buddy tie up in brainerd, Minnesota, and bought some tanks. And I'm super excited. I'm finishing my shrimp rack. Jimmy yeah, it's about time.
It's only been a six month process.
But it's like 22 two and a half gallon aquariums.
Yes.
And then I'm having two six inch by six inch by 48 inch weird looking aquariums next to them. So it's going to be just a wall of tanks.
It's going to be great. I'm excited for you.
I needed this after I broke my 125.
Yeah, rob's broke his 125 aquarium and he's still crying about it, but I am.
And I lost a testicle bringing it up the stairs. But in other.
Down to two now because he started with three.
I'm so glad you guys can do math. What we have is a review says, great show, five stars. You guys make me feel so much better about myself.
I like this.
So somebody you was you make me.
Feel so much better about myself.
Right. So I feel like that's insinuating to me. On the Story Time podcast, there's many.
Different episodes as that could relate to.
Yeah. It could be you and the ghost. It could be very much hashtag Sarah, by the way. No one has still sent me looking up fraze, Minnesota, the clip of Jimmy on the paper. What year was that?
A long time ago.
Come on, you got to give more information. I'm willing to give T shirts out here.
I don't know. I'd have to look back. It was probably about 15 years ago already.
I feel like that's a story. We should confess to mandy after the podcast, but we're going to go to a couple of the reviews. And this last week, jimmy, I have not told you this and I have not told Adam either, but we've been reached out by the Little Egyptian Aquarium Club in southern Illinois. They want us to speak. Really? Right.
Wait, is this an actual thing?
Actually, it's not rob's mom this time.
Yeah, actual confirmed aquarium club that wants us to speak. And they just were fans, apparently they heard our call, says that we'll speak at aquarium Club. It's not a problem. They contacted us, and they're like, so what do you want us to talk about? And they're like, we have no idea.
That's good. I will give them some bigfoot information.
Right? You're expert on bigfoot.
I forget it from Andy here later on this thing.
I'm just confused on why they're called the Little Egyptian.
I don't know.
I thought you were making a joke. Because I'm half Egyptian.
Maybe that's what it was. We have you on. And they decided to call us. But regardless, shout out to those guys. Yes, thank you. We have a Little Egyptian of our own, so we feel we get a.
Big Egyptian of our own.
Okay. This is from Rex, by the way, another longtime fan. I haven't laughed so hard in ages, especially about rob's experience with this old air pomp. Loved the experience. I was working today a little bit mortified, not usually shocked with him, but had a great laugh. Also was very interested in Adam scorpions, though. He likes to keep dangerous creatures. Love your stuff. Five out of five. Rex from Australia. There you go.
Oh, he's in Australia.
Indeed.
I can't get him to him there.
I mean, you can't send scorpions.
No, I wouldn't do that at all.
Not those.
Well, I mean, you don't even have those anymore.
No, but I was going to get them.
So if you're wondering what's going on, certainly listen to the storytime Three podcasts. We talk about how Adam had a pet shop and had these super human, deadly scorpions just arrive at a store that he had to turn in and all kinds of details. That was just crazy. That ended up on somebody's backpack from Pakistan. Is that correct?
Iraq where it was.
Iraq is what I was able to figure out. And then the scorpion was crawling up her daughter's leg, and she's like three or four, I think. Two or four, I don't remember. And she went icky, and she brushed it off, and then the mom stopped the car and caught it in a jar and dropped it off at my shop. And I thought it was like a native one until I realized it was eating all the native Us ones. Yeah, super bright.
You didn't intend to make a thunder dome, but it just kind of happened by mistake.
It happened by mistake, and I pulled it out and kept it by itself, and and then the local authorities got mad, and so I froze them.
Well, I mean, you call the local authorities, so you did the right thing. That's why we have mandy on here. We got another one from Peter. This is this peterson fish guy. He says king tiger placo's. L three three three come in white and yellow forms. If I mix them and bred them, would I get a mix ratio of each species or some man made fish that I can't breed? I don't know about king placos. King tiger placo is what they are. They're not that terribly common in the hobby. They're kind of like what we call a poor man's zebra playco. They're about $40, give or take, where you find them. And of course, COVID adjusts all those prices continually, but any plato that you have like that, and they come in different variations. So I'm going to use the example of Bristol nose plato because they're quite common to breed. I have albinos, I have browns. If I mix them, I get either a weird mix blotchy pattern or I have some outcome perfectly brown and perfectly albino. And that's generally a consensus whenever you mix the majority of them just blotch out.
And if you don't know what their lineage is, who knows what were their parents? You don't know.
You're rolling the dice.
Sorry. My guess would be that they would be the normal they would look like the normal ones because I'm guessing that the white is a recessive, right?
I wouldn't guess that. They wouldn't be anything different just because that yellow is not real prominent in those. But again, I'm not an expert on those. I have not bred those. I've had friends that do and I've never heard of mix them. There's so many different playco varieties that having one so close to another, just a yellow variety versus a white that you shouldn't see much of a difference when you breed them. Now we have people that breed like completely crazy play, goes together like clowns with I forgot what the other hybrid was, but some of them even come out sterile. I don't know why, but it's a crapshoot. Adam.
Oh, she's back. She accidentally ended up in tank top for some reason.
I didn't even see where she went.
I'm still trying to find your place where the messages are. I'm clicking away and I picked myself out of here. Just carry on. I'm back.
Can I put a bell on her?
Just put a bell on her. Yeah. For those that are listening, if you guys want to join the debate, tree live, we do these on mondays. We try to do them 07:00 p.m. Central on mondays.
We're never on time.
Come join us. Aquariumguyspodcast.com. Bottom of the web page, you'll see a link for discord. That's where we're recording these. And we also have it on twitch twitch Tvaquariumguys because we're cool now.
Jimmy, I did not know that.
Right. So if you want to ask questions, we have a channel called Podcastlivechat. And people are already filling in this because mandy has been a highly demanded guest to come back on the show. All right, I think that does it for questions this week. Jimmy, any other additions?
I've got nothing, man.
No, we have something.
Oh, that's right. Adam, please, Adam, start this out. I found it and I sent it out to these guys.
Okay, so we're talking about the idiot that is suing PetSmart because his coy died.
Now, I would like to put out, because I heard about this a little bit as well. We have no stance on this other than you should always have the best thought of your fish's health in mind, but please do continue.
Okay, so he's suing PetSmart because the fish had a bacterial infection and they died. And he has mental trauma and distress. And he says Pet smarter.
Pet.
I think it was PetSmart, wasn't it, Jim?
I'm trying to pull it up right now. I think it was petco, but I'm not real sure, to be honest.
Yeah, either one.
And he says one of the two, it's PetSmart.
I got it right here.
PetSmart.
Okay.
Yeah.
The gentleman is from Long Island, and he's suing PetSmart for emotional distress after dozens of koi die. He didn't sleep because of the fishes. That's what it says.
I think that was, like, a really bad writer's pun. He didn't sleep with the fishes, but instead he's like he didn't sleep because of the fishes. So the idea is this gentleman built a massive pond in his backyard, got all the expert advice on how to build it, all the details spent in a zubrint of amount of money on special, as he called, Japanese koi, and.
He spent $12,000 on him.
He way overpaid on these fish, in my opinion. If you'd like to get yourself some coy, we're not sponsored by this gentleman, but bickle Koi Farms is right out of what's the state right below us? Iowa.
Iowa.
Toddsville, Iowa. And he's been farming there for years. Certainly get it if you want to start coy. They're definitely more inexpensive. He's got pretty darn good quality, and it's been his same strains for the last, like, 20 years.
Yeah, if you read the whole thing, he went and bought koi from everywhere.
Yeah, he bought a little bit of everything from everybody and then decided that.
Throw them all together in a 4000.
Gallon pond as one giant quarantine tub. And then said that he had red streaks going across all his fish, which, of course, is a sign of a vicious bacterial infection, and they crapped out. And he suing for emotional damages and large.
I don't feel sorry for the guy. I feel sorry for the fish dying. But you can't blame petco, PetSmart or wherever he bought all of his $12,000 of the fish from.
It's called quarantine, people.
There's not a ton of times where we sit back and just try to defend petco. But honestly, if you're having a pet, you're responsible for knowing how to carry it or taking the time to learn with someone. Like a great podcast.
And then that brought up the story of the guy that had half a million dollars with a coy in Michigan in a pond. And the pond froze over because the electricity went out. So all the water features and the water heater went out. And he took an axe to the pond and the vibrations of the axe hitting ricochet off the bottom. And then the vibrations killed all of his fish. But he just felt stupid. He didn't go and sue somebody because that happened. So if your pond is ever freezing, you have fish outside, melt the water with like hot water or something. Don't hit it with a hammer or axe or anything else. That's for the northern people.
Something.
Yeah, just melt it.
So if you're interested in this, it's from the New York Post. And anyway, we will put a link on it so you guys can read about it and decide for yourself. But the guy did everything wrong. And of course, blames everybody else.
Of course. So last thing we do before we get into the interview with mandy about Sunfish is we've had demand of making a new merch line. So we've taken some time and we decided to shop some ideas. We're going to do more, but the first four T shirts Adam has not seen, so I'm pretty excited. They are in podcast, live chat. Adam, the first one is certified Aquarium Guy. I think it's pretty classy. Then we have time to punch a throat just for you, Jimmy. We also have where the word endlers is scratched out and says feeder guppies. Just for you, Adam. And also the famous go fluke yourself because we decided to censor our swears around here.
I'm buying two of those.
Are you? I figured it was going to be three and then that certain ENDLER one was being ignored.
Is that for your in laws?
Well, one of them I'm going to wear for the in laws because Thanksgiving and Christmas is coming.
There you go. Always looking for us.
I might wear that at work, too, at one of my job.
So we're just getting the final drafts finished here. So you'll see the store up soon. Certainly watch our social media or come to discord to see if we have T shirts available yet. That's right around the bend. Christmas, we'll have something hopefully, so you can put it in your stocking for Christmas.
That's right.
All right. Well, if we have nothing else, I.
Think it's time to go.
Time to go. mandy, again, thanks so much for being patient. How has things changed? Because the last time we spoke, we could see each other in person. Now we're remote. How has the things that the DNR been handling since COVID Where do we.
Even begin with that? So it hits us pretty hard in terms of as a state agency, what the appropriate response will be. So it was mid March, I guess, thinking back, that as soon as the governor put in the first recommendations of everything needs to try and retract back to your home and work from home as much as you can, we followed that immediately. I had no choice, and all of our field work was put on hold. All of our offices were switched to telework, and it's kind of been that way ever since. Throughout the spring, we made some hard pushes to try and get approval to operate our spawn takes and our hatcheries, and that was not approved. The hatchery that I work at has a history of operating for almost 110 years, and this was the first year that we were not allowed to operate. And thinking back to April, which was when that hatchery stuff would have started for us, we really didn't know a lot about if the world was going to end, if the sky was falling, what this was going to do for us. So the response was just basically hide to protect our staff, to protect everyone, to protect our families. And we've learned a lot since then. Throughout the summer, we did seek and receive approval to do quite a bit of field work. We have been able to resume some of our activities. We have a lot of social distance guidance in place. Masks are mandated similar to anything you would in any other business. We have to justify how we can do our work safely in order for it to be approved. And we have been able to pick things up a little bit at a time, so it's getting better. But again, I will credit that to all of us learning more about what we can and what we cannot do safely. And our agency and the state as a whole has really done a great job valuing the work that we do, making sure that we're safe, not putting us at risk, and still trying to get whatever critical portions of our job done that we can safely. So coming at it, everyone's frustrated, everyone's got COVID. Fatigue is a real thing. But when you take a step back and you look at it, I do think we've handled it as well as we possibly can.
Now, mandy, this summer, I did see that you guys were able to put people out at the docks and stuff to check for invasive species, species and stuff. How did that change? Do they have to wear masks all the time out there in the field and stuff?
That DNR actually hires very few of those. And what they're talking about is at a lot of the state public accesses, there are inspectors to make sure that you're not transporting water or plants or fish or anything like that out of a lake, out of concern for spreading invasive species. So many most of those that you see are not actually hired directly by DNR. They're hired through watershed districts or counties or lake associations, often with grant money received from DNR but not directly from DNR. So as a result they are not bound by our rules of what they can and cannot do, they're working for somebody else.
So if something would come up, are they able to contact you and get some assistance?
Yes. Most of them do not have law enforcement duties. They are there mostly as an advisory role or trying to encourage people to do the right thing and make good decisions. And then if they do have people that are problematic, they can call for enforcement action to be taken or write down license plates or whatever they need to do. But the people themselves don't often have law enforcement authority.
Perfect. Well again, what we ask you to come for is this popularity. So mandy, what I want to do is just start out for our listeners as well because they may not know of what's happening that we're seeing at least, and this may be an isolated issues or we've just been picked on, but we've been noticing that there's been a lot more questions. And again our podcast is worldwide, we're based in Minnesota because that's where we live. But we have so many fans out the country, europe, Australia, all over and it applies differently everywhere. So we'll get to legalities later but right now we're just trying to get more information on sunfish. And sunfish are again a popular aquarium craze. Sunfish are a type of cichlid native to our area. And the reason we reached out back to you, not only because by demand it didn't fit, but because Minnesota has 18,000 ish lakes and we're better to find out than almost every lake having sunfish in it in Minnesota. So what we want to do is go over questions on how they are, their natural habitats, how they breed, size they're getting and then issues they're seeing in a natural habitat and maybe just a couple of the species because there's different types of sunfish. But to start off with, what does Minnesota have for sunfish?
Well Minnesota when you say sunfish and I say sunfish and your top fan in Australia say sunfish, you're going to be talking about likely three different things. So Minnesota loves to throw sunfish and panfish and central kids all kind of in the same mix. So when you say sunfish, what I think we're talking about are going to be blue gills, pumpkin seeds, green sunfish and the hybridization of any of those mixed together. That's typically what I think of as sunfish. Some people will throw black croppies and rock baths and white croppies into that mix as well. And then I heard mentioned earlier of baths so large mouth bass and small mouth bass. So all of those are going to be very very different. But for the general speaking, when you say sunfish I'm going to assume we're talking about blue gills, pumpkin seeds, green sunfish, and the hybridization of any of those is that fair game.
The species that we're seeing, especially people that are asking about, are number one, green sunfish. They're really popular in Europe. Blue gills are not so much or if they do, they come in hybridized because of how they were bred in a farm. And people are trying to get a hold of pumpkin seeds because what we call pumpkin seeds because they are just breathtaking, honestly. So the only other thing we hear is like some other red ear sunfish but it really does not come up. It's almost exclusively green and into pumpkin seeds, okay?
Which isn't surprising because green sunfish are the most tolerant of poor habitat conditions than any of our sunfish. And pumpkin seeds on the flip side, are going to have the most specific habitat requirements. Pumpkin seeds are only going to be found in lakes that have really great natural habitat and that would be good water quality, low chance of winter kill, great emergent and submergent vegetation that keeps that water clarity really well. Not a lot of parasites, not a lot of competition from green sunfish. So they're going to be a little more picky about where they're going to be. They're not as widespread. Green sunfish are almost as hard to kill as fat headmen. I was in bullheads. So again, one of the tolerant of really poor habitat conditions, which makes them pretty widespread. They're some of the last fish to succumb to winter kill. When we in Minnesota, all of our lakes freeze over and our oxygen is limited throughout the winter. But green sunfish can basically live in a mud puddle for the winter and be just fine. So they also breed like crazy and will hybridize with everything on an aquarium side of it. They're also the most apt to jump out of an aquarium next to northern pike. So if you're one that has green sunfish, you better have a lid on your tank because they're jumpers. So it's not surprising that greens are the most common and pumpkin seeds are rare. The male pumpkin seeds are absolutely gorgeous, but again, they're going to be a product of their environment and it's just not something you see being able likely to be kept successfully without major issues because of a poor environment condition.
And like you said, I think it's number one hard to get a hold of some of these other countries, especially Europe, because you said before they're more delicate. And these places that they're getting the sunfish from are certain farms in north America that do this. And again, I don't know a single farm in Minnesota that ever exports or has a license to export. So this is probably like somewhere in Texas or something. But again, they're trying to export to Europe and no one essentially that I know of farms pumpkin seed on the regular as far as like a commercial product generally they try to do some of the panfish in certain areas where they have licenses to sell for food. And if you can't find someone to farm a pumpkin seed, more than likely you're going to have some state law preventing them being harvested, moved, bred, farmed and shipped. So trying to find pumpkin seed, especially in a legal method, is going to be very hard for people out of country to do unless again, they're in the native area. Now, I grew up right on a lake. I grew up with pumpkin seeds and I can confirm that in my area, my lake was 65 to 70ft deep and it was extremely crystal clear and we had no real parasite problems. But if I ever traveled to another lake immediately, pumpkin seeds were the ones that had the most parasites of any other sunfish. Is that accurate or is that just my luck?
Not to say you're incorrect because I wouldn't want to do that, but I would blame bad luck on that one. Some lakes are just more heavy in parasites than others and we'll see a lot of neascus, that black spot on pumpkin seeds and blue gills in my experience, too, it just seems like those pure strain fish are more susceptible to the parasites than say, your hybrids or your green sunfish or whatever else. Now, that's not documented by any that's my 23 years of experience looking at gamefish in Minnesota lakes. But I wouldn't say that pumpkins are the most susceptible. Often when you get those parasites in, every lake is going to be different, but they're a product of some other condition in the lake as well. You're not going to have awesome water clarity, water quality, habitat preservation, emergent vegetation, habitat spawning substrate and everything else and a bunch of non desirables. You're going to have kind of a decrease in habitat availability, if you will, I guess, and you'll start seeing some of those other issues. But I wouldn't say that pumpkin seeds are the most susceptible. I'm just going to say they're really picky about their environment and it's believable that there aren't people that farm them because I think it would be extremely hard to do successfully because of their requirements.
Now real quick, if you see a pumpkin seed that doesn't have great color, does that give you an indication that the lake isn't doing well? I mean, do their colors change? Because I know with all of our aquarium fish, if the color changes, you can tell they're stressed out and you need to treat or do a water change.
Same thing with native fish as well and also breeding colors. If they're spawning, those males will just be brilliant colors. But if they're in the middle of winter, they're not going to be as brilliant colors as spawning time. And if they're in murky water or even if you catch one at night, if the colors are going to kind of bleed out almost. If you put a clear white background in your aquarium, at least I have in the past, you noticed some of the colors bleed out of some of the fish, and it'll be kind of a product of their environment, but then it's also the time of year and the age of that fish, too. An old, mature spawning fish is going to have a different color scheme than a younger fish, younger and mature fish.
That makes sense because my grandmother's got blue hair.
There you go. It just happened overnight. Cotton candy. But no, that's pretty common with the other cyclists. Like african cichlids that we have is even rainbow fish. You do a water change just from the temperature, and maybe because it's fresh water, putting it in the tank, immediately, they change color and just brighten up.
For that day, they can tell you they're happy.
So, I mean, that's just temperature, water quality, are they stressed? What time is it? Are they sleeping? There's so many variables for color. Again, we're going to go down the whole gamut, because most people that are listening to this, at least I would assume, have never, of course, thought of having a sunfish and maybe never heard of it before. So for the three species that we're talking about, what sizes do they get in best conditions?
In best conditions in a lake, ten inches is impressive. Some lakes that are not heavily fished and have a long history of having some great populations will readily grow ten inch sunfish, and those are fantastic to catch. They're targeted by anglers, especially here in minnesota. The winter angling pressure for large sunfish is just ridiculous. Actually, minnesota is right in the middle of proposing some new sunfish regulations to limit the amount of fish that you can harvest from the wild in an effort to try and preserve some of those fish and allow them to continue to grow and maintain that population of large sunfish that we have. Despite minnesota being kind of known as the walleye state, and walleye being such a high profile species, sunfish are actually the most caught and the most targeted fish in the state because they're easy to catch. All you need is a pretty simple fishing rod and whatever worm you can find under a rock on the shore and a small hook you can fish from shore. It's easy to catch a bunch of them in a day. It's a great thing to get kids started on. So there's a huge push for maintaining our sunfish population here in minnesota. But to get back to what your question was, ten inches is pretty good. If you're fishing off of a dock and you're just fishing with leftover corn from dinner or whatever it may be. It's really common to catch a ton of three, four, five inch sunfish. But unless you're really good with a knife, those are hard to fly and hard to eat.
Yeah. Commonly referred to as fishy nuggets at my house. And when you only have a limit, I think is what, ten now? You don't really get much of a meal out of it unless you have everybody fish.
No. I will share this, though. We have a swim raft out in our lake and I'm sure you've talked about fish like this in the past, but sunfish, they're kind of mean little buggers. And if you have any birth marks or moles or nail polish or jewelry on scab, they think that you are breakfast. So at our swimwear that we had in our yard, my daughter and I were out there and we were just getting nailed and she said, that's it, we're catching these things and we're eating them. So she and I went and took our fishing rods out to the swim raft and caught our limit and filled every little three and four inch one we had and they never bit us again. So that was kind of a revenge for the day. So it's possible you can't eat them. I wouldn't recommend it. And if it was anything out of pure spite, I don't know that we would have done it.
Did you feel the heads back in the water as we born into the other one?
No.
Let a sign happen and then the catfish comes up and gobbles it. Now, in captivity, I've heard of some crazy measurements of like I think the blue gill is probably going to be the biggest. I don't know if you can tested this, but I have like 14 inches. What's the state record on some of these sunfish?
Oh, man.
I got you.
You did. But I have Google at my hand. In a captive environment, it wouldn't surprise me, actually, if green sunfish were larger, but because of the body shape of green sunfish, green sunfish are going to be a little longer. Blue gills, when they grow, they're going to be almost as round as they are high or wide as they are high, where green sunfish, when they get bigger, they tend to widen out and almost look more like large milk baths.
Got you. See, state records are different because they're trying to hit game fish. Right. This is a popular fished product, so they do by pounds.
So £2, £2 13oz. And green sunfish is £1.04 ounce. But again, I think if you're measuring from snout to tail, I would be surprised if the green sunfish weren't larger.
Got you. So, yeah, captivity, that's big captivity, you're trying to emulate a perfect environment. They have food every day, they're not competing, working the calories out. They can just be essentially a fat, happy, lazy fish and you can get some normal sizes. The perfect example is the paku. The paku in the wild only goes so big somewhere around like, what, 18 inches, 20 inches? And in aquarium environments, we know from the Ohio Fish Rescue and others that they get bigger than garbage can sizes we're talking, some of them go to car hoods, like incredible sizes. So in an aquarium environment, with some of these fish in perfect food conditions, they can grow to obscene sizes. But again, I haven't had a lot of sunfish and an aquarium. I've only gone from people that have held them in other areas.
And I have kept sunfish and we can get into the reasons of why and how and when you can keep them. The food is a big issue for them, what they feed on and how much of that food you give them, obviously. But for the sunfish that I've had experience with, they're not big flake food eaters. You've got to go into the bloodworms and brine shrimp and things like that, and then it just becomes a supply issue, for my experience anyway, of how well those fish do and how they grow. And remember, these are fish from the wild. Unless they've been raised on trout crumble or spreading number two or whatever it may be in a hatchery situation, fish in the wild, and any animal in the wild has natural food ships. When they're little, they're going to eat one thing. When they're teenagers, they're going to eat something else, and when they're adults, they're going to eat something else. So trying to imitate that in a captive environment is pretty hard. And if you get that down, then you will be able to support those fish and see what their maximum growth may be. But without knowing that going in, it can be pretty tough. And I've run into that with a few different fish in the past.
What's their diet in the wild?
They're going to eat bugs. When they're little, they're going to eat zooplankton. So the microscopic critters that are floating around in the water that you can't see, and then when they get older, they will eat like, the blood worms, the brine shrimp. So more of the bigger species of zooplankton, they will eat what's that like.
An adult in the wild? What are they just generally bugs?
They're going to eat small fish, they'll eat like wali fry, they'll eat babies of other fish species. They will eat some minnows. Again, it's going to be a product of their environment, what they're in. But big fish eat little fish. And that's kind of how you got to think of that in the big grand scheme of things. If you're a 30 pound fish, you're going to eat a three pound fish. And if you're a three pound fish, you're going to eat a £1 fish. If you're £1 fish, you're going to eat a quarter pound and fish or however all the way down it goes. But once those adult fish are out of their bug phase and they can actually take down an entire fish, they will. So trying to stay on that food shift is important, but you guys are very experienced. That's nothing new for you.
I'm sure gamut to fish species all have different attitudes now from the people that have helped in the past, because we've had definitely a lot of people, hashtag Peter the sunfish guy, messages about food and diet, rotating diet, especially for these species, certainly help. And they have a different digestive system compared to your tropical fish, just for the sake of temperature in your tank. So if you have a sunfish, don't put a heater in there, it's just not worth it. Keep your tank as cool as possible. It helps longevity. And they have in the peak, if you turn up the temperature and try to match a lake environment in yours, you're going to kill it without ammonia, because their system doubles down, like, almost like it's a goldfish of the amount of excrement they put in the tank. So keep your tank cool and just like you said, bloodworms. But if you can wean them rotate it. Never get rid of bloodworms. But a cichlid based pellet formula is real high in protein and that really is, again, their type of cichlid. I'd certainly put that in a rotation of diet. Ciglit. pellets, again, flakes a bit harder, just because it's not something else they can hit or react to. And you can train off of a pellet pretty easily just by throwing a pellet and splashing the water and it gets their attention, so it's not too hard to train onto a cigarette pellet, but always rotate your diet. Even throw some tuba flex worms. I found out it goes a long way sticking to the side of the glass. Jimmy is like, do you fatten them up for the winter? No.
Stop it, Jimmy.
I'm just taking short lunch or chicken bake.
I will say that one fish get too large to keep it an aquarium, depending on the species, and not release them back into the wild shore. Lunch has come into play.
And the.
Fish said, blueberry pancake.
We've had a good one. Just to share this with you, mandy. The convict cichlid is the rabbit of the aquarium lifestyle. And we always pick on people. It's like, oh, I have two convict cichlids. So you're telling us you have 30?
Yeah, right.
It's always a joke, because they're one of the hardiest fish species in the aquarium hobby. They breed absolutely like rabbits overnight and they just never stop breeding. And people have asked, well, what do you do with them? And then we just sent them a fish recipe as a joke. We told them it was a joke. Little salt, lemon flowery seasoning. Salt goes along.
Talk about chicken nuggets here.
There was someone that was asking about reptiles, right. turtles like fish.
There you go, there you go.
And they bred in the toilet.
Yes. They actually did an experiment. What they did is they plugged the back toilet spot so they couldn't go down the drain and they just emulated. They put a bubbler sponge filter in a toilet and they bred in the toilet.
That has to be a 2020 COVID story isn't it?
No, it was before that I should.
Check on those people during quarantine because they're not okay here knows what happens.
Here's my thought I sure as hell wouldn't want to walk up in their yard because where are they doing their business? Are they doing it like the dog out in the front yard or what? Because if your toilet is all plugged up with fish yeah I'm just saying.
Maybe they had like three bathrooms or just bought a toilet and put water in it. Too much time on their hands but all right so next one would be breeding so again we freeze over in the winter so like paint us through spring because I'm assuming that's when stuff starts. How does the breeding cycle work for sunfish?
They're typically not going to start breeding until water gets up in the upper sixty s to low seventy s and Minnesota has a wide array of temperature shifting in the spring so the southern part of the state we could have bright and sunny leaves on the trees. And the northern part of the state, you're still driving on 3ft of ice. So there's great temperature variation between the areas of the state. And with that, in some lakes in the southern part of the state, we'll see sunfish start breeding may, mid may, early may, even some years. And then in the northern part of the state, they're not going to be breeding until the end of June or into July. So it completely is weather dependent on where things are at. So when lakes start to thaw here in Minnesota, and what generally happens is the water under the ice is upper 30s, low 40s, pretty much all year. When things start to thaw, water warms up. You'll start to see some of that growth of vegetation again and kind of the turning over of the lake where the lake kind of solidifies itself into its condition that it's going to be in the summer. veg starts to grow and then we'll see some of those fish start to build their nests and wait for that water to warm up and things move in. So again it depends on the weather, it depends on the year, it depends on the location of the state but typically it's not going to be until the weather or the water is for 60s even low 70s do they absolutely.
Need that cold to trigger a spawn? Do they absolutely need that cycle or are they kind of like some of the other fish where if you just keep them fat nappy they just breed no matter what?
There's a lot of a little bit of both. There are some situations where fish as you well know will breed whenever wherever because they feel like it on a Tuesday but with native gamefish in a natural environment and those are the two words I'm going to stick by native gamefish natural environment. That seasonal shift does trigger their pheromones. And what actually is a big player in it too, is the daylight cycle. So just like plants or anything else, that as days get longer, their pheromones start to trigger in. So it's different biological triggers that will push them into spawning. So we always say with walleyes, they're just the most common thing we spawn in Minnesota, that it's water temperature and it's daylight. It's both of those two together. You can't really have great success with only one of those. So if you're in a captive environment, you may be able to get them to breed. But I would think it would be tough because you need to create all those triggers to make them naturally form their egg mass. You may be able to do that with depending on how crazy people get. I mean, people may be injecting steroids, they may be working with daylights hours and all that too. It just, it's possible. But for its most effectiveness, again, in a natural condition for native fish, it would be water temp and then that daylight, period.
So how does the actual spawning occur? What do they do for those who are listening?
So sunfish in Minnesota are looking for sandy areas within emergent vegetation. So that would be bullrush, not so much cat tails because cattails grow so dense. So bullrush, river bull rush, even flowering rush, if you're up on invasive species, is pretty good spawning habitat. Anything that provides some structure and allows fish to move within it, they'll also spawn in just sandy areas too. But the importance of vegetation is more than I can ever give it credit to, the importance of edge. So the males will actually build the nest. That's one of my favorite trivia questions. If I go in and talk to schools or at a fair or something, my favorite trivia question along with is the bald eagle really bald? Because that's a great one too. Do you think the females or the male blue gills build a nest and 99% of everyone will say, oh, the females do it, and I get to say, no, you're wrong, it's the males. So the males will actually build and defend nests. And it's pretty cool for blue gills, especially the hierarchy that those fish have within their system. So the largest blue gills are kind of king boss bluegill. They're going to look for the prime spawning habitat, which is going to be the best area they can find. And then all the other little bluegills want to try and get as close as they can to where that prime spot is. But the male blue gill, the largest males, will find it and defend it and they'll build what looks like the surface of the moon, just craters. And if you've ever been in a lake in late May, early June, you'll often see in the shallow area there's going to be just it looks like bigfoot came and walked through and left footprints all over, but it's actually blue hills. They'll use their tail and they'll fan out any of the detritus like leaf matter or small sticks or whatever it may be. They'll use their tails and they'll fan out a little circle that's probably ten inches or so wide and then they will hover right over the center part of that nest and they will defend anything that comes into it, which makes fishing for them extremely easy when they're spawning. So you kind of have to count on responsible anglers to not be pulling big male blue gills off their nest all the time. So then the females will come in and decide which male seems worthy enough of her egg mass and she'll deposit that egg mass in the nest. The male will fertilize at that time and then they'll hatch. The male will sit there and defend until those eggs hatch, which is generally about five days to a week. Once they're laid, they'll hatch, and then that male will at that time leave sometimes, at least. I've seen it in some lakes, too. It's like there's one male left that doesn't realize that the party left, that his eggs are gone and he'll stay there forever. So there's some psyche going on there, I'm sure, too. But typically it's the male that does all the work, the nest building, the defending. The female will come in, layer egg mask and leave, and the male is left to take care of it all.
And I can't confirm it's very cool. Again, I lived on the Clear Lake. I was on a big bluff. So you get to look down and in the spring you look at the bank and it literally looks like the whole beach is polka dotted because you'll see these perfectly circular nests built in sand and these large sunfish over top of them guarding them. It's so much fun.
It is really cool. It's something that I don't think a lot of people pay attention to and see and know what it is. But if you do, it's the coolest thing. And it's fun to kind of mess with them a little bit too because you can throw a rock or something and those fish will just go crazy to watch them defend. And then their neighbor, who is also defending his little ten inch square will come too far into the boundary and then they'll have a little fish fight and kick each other back to their spot and then they'll both just sit there and stare at each other. It's pretty cool. You've got to be a special kind of crazy to sit there and watch male blue gills on their nest all day and be completely entertained. But I am that kind of special crazy. So I'm saying that it's pretty cool.
And it's not that you even threw the rock into the nest. It's even anywhere in the vicinity of them noticing, and they'll have to come try to boss out the situation. It's a lot of fun.
Yeah.
So where are the lazy females at this time? I mean, they they roll in, they drop their eggs, they say, see ya, and all of a sudden, he's a single father. What's the deal?
Well, they do their fair share of work by building that egg mast. I mean, they're going to have 80,000 eggs in their body, too.
So they've been through the buffet building.
They are going to be cruising wherever they can to find food. And at that time, it's mostly going to be along the weed edge. They're going to be out a little deeper and just kind of hovering and eating and waiting for everything to feel right.
I like how you stick up for the women there. I just was trying to start a fight.
No, there you do got to be so mean. I want to guess.
Well, she won't tell me the cigarette where bigfoot is.
Well, I'm giving you clue. See, he walks in the water in the spring.
Yeah. There you go. I'm just concerned about how is bigfoot after this whole COVID thing. I mean, who got to take him home if you're all on no he's warranted.
In Minnesota, it's been really well documented that the number of people that have been enjoying natural resources, walking, hiking, biking, fishing, hunting, everything, is pushing numbers that we haven't seen in the state for years. So the amount of people out and about cruising, looking for bigfoot and bugging him when he's just wanting to rest are quite high. So I would say he is deep, deep in the woods, somewhere farther than he's ever had to retreat in the past.
So you're saying virgus. Right.
Maybe like nevis. Northern nevis.
There you go. Out by the atv trails.
Yes.
Now, again, that's in the wild. So we do have a little bit of insider in the aquarium. How we've seen these with different people I've helped in the past and got successful spawns off of these, especially with green sunfish. The others I have not had any luck with, but I'm assuming it works the same way in the aquarium is again, the temperature does help induce in an artificial environment. And again, you have to have a really sizable aquarium to get this done. Minimum of 75 gallons. I would certainly recommend if you have the space to do 100 and 5300 gallon, the more space you have is essentially the bigger and more centered territory you can be. Sand is required. They're not going to do this on just a gravel bottom. You would have to have sand and make sure it's crazy thick. We're talking three, four inches of sand because they're going to whip the sand around the aquarium, making that nest. So again, temperature inducing. So if you want to do a water change, that puts the water a little colder and then over the week turn up the temperature three degrees, four degrees slowly. And as that slow rise I haven't had the light issue. But again, most people have their light on during the day, off during at night, so I don't know what that affects. But the big one in artificial settings is barometric pressure. If you're sitting there at home and a storm is coming in, that's when they're going to spawn. Every time at least trying to do artificial settings. And then once they get to spawn and you're not doing complete water changes, there's a lot of hormones in the water and they can continue from time to time, but generally it goes in sessions and then they're done for a while. It's a lot of fun to see. Have a nice amount of space and places for the females to hide. logs are a nice article, so they have places to move around obstacles in the tank, but definitely sand. Make it thick and try to use those recommendations and again document it because there's not a ton of people doing this in captivity and if they are, it's going to be I don't know, is there farms that are doing this for the dnr or is it just mainly walla and some other species like sturgeon?
We found that sunfish tend to do really well on their own. We don't stock any sunfish. So with that we're not raising any inexternal hatcheries or farms or anything like that. There are quite a few licensed dealers and growers in the state, but to my knowledge they are all harvesting from the wild and I don't know of anyone that is doing any captive breeding.
Now I know in other states where they've tried to do a different farming for whatever purposes, it's almost exclusively chemically induced in the water. They try to put hormones in the water, much like they do for like siamese algae eaters are quite common because they can't get them to normally consistently breed in an artificial environment, even if it's a pond. In Florida, I've had them breed in my tank now three times over eight years and I've had literally the last two times have been in the last month. So I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know if I can replicate it. But again, it's very difficult and they induce hormones in the water. There's not a lot of safe ways to do that in the home aquarist and I never recommend that if you can help it.
Once they do spawn too. One of the biggest predators on fish and fish eggs is other fish. So throw that in there as well. If you do end up with fry somehow in your tank, I would think it's what goes without saying, but I'll still say it because I just can't help myself. But to get those adult fish out of there and make sure that they don't get eaten right away.
So in Minnesota, we have a different environment. So how does what we like to call hibernation happen, which I don't understand how fish would quote unquote, hibernate, like a traditional creature, like burying themselves or something like that. But again, how do they handle the winter transition and live out throughout the winter?
Well, fish don't hibernate, and I will have this argument with my dad and his old timer buddies for many, many years.
Thank you for clarity.
Northern pike do not lose their teeth. Northern pike do not bury themselves in the mud. And that was kind of one of the old wives tale that was, oh, they just lose their teeth and they bury themselves in the mud and they wait till spring.
That is the craziest thing I've ever heard of. How do you ice fish? How does that work?
Well, that's why they don't bite in the winter because all their teeth are going and they're buried in the mud.
It sounds like they need an excuse.
More down here than anything else.
Yes, you can laugh, but there's that kind of crazy running around loose. There truly is. They do not lose their teeth. They do not hibernate. When lakes freeze over and fish will continue to move around, even though there's a lot of snow on the lake and there's ice, light still does penetrate, so it's not pitch black. They're moving around, they're going to slow down a little bit. They're movement, their metabolism is going to slow down, but they don't freeze solid. The lakes don't freeze solid. Some do. In that case, everything will die. But there's often less than 3ft of ice on the lake. So they're fine moving around. They're still going to eat, they're not going to have the abundance of places to hide because a lot of the vegetation will die and drop down. But otherwise they're just doing their normal thing in their winter home cruising and looking for food.
Now, in the aquarium environment, I don't have friends that have put these in ponds and if they do, it's always going to be out of state where they have these things, where they make their own game fishing ponds, which is really common in southern states. We really don't do that in Minnesota. And I'm pretty sure that there's laws preventing that in a lot of situations. But again, there's no documentation that I have. But like, for instance, coy and Goldfish often winterize even in Canadian environments. And what they refer to in the hobby is like that quote unquote hibernation is literally just a metabolism slowing down. So at that 50 degree mark, koi and goldfish really don't eat much. They slow down, they'll still interact, they'll still move around, they're very sluggish, but you can go a month without feeding them at all. In fact, I've had people that don't feed them out through the entire winter and just let them anything they can find in the tank is enough for. Them to fuel off of or just fat deposits all winter. Because again, they're not moving around. They're not worrying about predators. They're more or less in a sizable pond that they can just lay around by spring. They're lean, hardy, and hungry. Again, with these, there's no cover. They have to worry about predators. They still eat. Clearly we go out ice fishing, and for those that don't know, because we've had questions on this, some people live in these beautiful climates where there's no such thing as lakes frozen over. So we have people that drive on the ice. The ice goes up to 2ft thick in some seasons, drive on the ice with ice houses, drill a hole through the ice and fish out of a six to eight inch ice hole, even twelve inch ice hole, and catch fish throughout the winter. It's a lot of fun. People have parties on the ice. There's certain risks. As long as you know the inches of ice, if the lake is commonly used and refreeze, or if there's something like springs or a river flowing in, there's risks to go off of. But again, they do eat throughout the winter, otherwise we wouldn't get any bites. And I love that I'm going to get that meme going of teeth falling off and burying themselves. That is my favorite thing in the world.
I wish it would happen to my ex wife.
Who said that he wasn't going to talk about his ex wife.
I was warned. I couldn't say anything.
We're going to have to get a t shirt soon.
Yeah. And you know what? We'll give her all the money for it.
We'll do all the proceeds. All the proceeds will go to the tears of your ex wife.
That's right.
That's hilarious. So one of the things are we missing of a basic care so in an aquarium environment, because again, every aquarius is trying to do their best to emulate some sort of natural territory. We got breeding down food size. You talked about some of their curiosity and aggression. If you have those moles I've had scabs bitten off, because when you're in the water swimming, scabs swell and they just come and rip it off. You're not piranhas people, but they're curious and always looking for a meal.
I did get at one of my night in my job, I always kind of keep track of the calls that make me laugh and the customers that I'll never forget. And I did get a call about a lake that was close to our office, that the homeowner was really concerned about piranhas in her lake. And she did not know that when they bought this cabin that there were actually piranhas in the lake. And she was pretty angry that no one told her that there were piranhas, and she was calling to see what she could do about it and if DNR would come out and let the piranhas out of her lake. And I had her take a picture and send it to me, and it was blue gills. And she was not very impressed and didn't really want to believe me that they were not actually piranhas. And it was a native fish. And that's just something that she's going to have to deal with. And welcome to being a lake homeowner. But she was convinced that they were pranas and was not happy about it.
What was her name?
Hey, I'm just wondering.
I was with my ex wife.
We'll just call her Karen.
There you go.
Very much a Karen.
Don't be a Karen. Now, in the natural habitat, like we mentioned, different attitude in the lakes and streams, again, they're lower on the food chain. Again, they're smaller fish. Their eggs are always sought after by different predators and catfish. But in the home based aquarium, they are very much a cyclist. They're very curious, territorial, especially if you can get them successfully trying to even build a nest. Make sure that for minimum requirements, 55 gallon, if you have any type of other fish in the tank, they do have to be of equal size or higher, otherwise you would have to densely populate the tank so there's not that lowers the aggression. With sickwood species, that takes a ton of filtration. And again, 55 is bare. Minimum 75 or higher is recommended. And if you're breeding, definitely 100 and 5300 because again, you need that base surface so they can make a nest and leave females alone.
And I would throw in there too, that sunfish, their natural presence in the water column is going to be suspended. They're not top orientated, they're not bottom feeders. They are suspended within the water column. So knowing that, it's important to make sure you have some sort of structure for them to hide in. I guess in the tanks that I've had, those three foot long flowing plants that start and you can kind of anchor them and then tie them off to somewhere else, those tend to do really well. It gives them something to hide in that middle part of the water column.
Wonderful. Jimmy, Adam, am I missing anything on base fish requirements?
Well, I'm just thinking, would it just be easier just to seal up your basement and just throw some sand in your basement and fill it up full of water?
I mean, we can work towards that.
But yeah, it's incredible how much work goes into trying to keep sunfish that people have done over the years. And the only time I ever really see it is I've seen it at some restaurants where people have had a nice display of the local native fish and stuff. So it's very beautiful when they do that.
Now again, too, and I mentioned it earlier, but if the interest is green sunfish, those little buggers are jumpers, they will jump. Green sunfish and northern pike are like the first fish to jump out of.
An enclosure, I can test that. To even live well is catching them and they do that right in the boat. But now let's go down the legalities, because again, this podcast is for everyone. We have people across the world that are listening to this, maybe have some access to our North American sunfish in other countries. But again, we want to stress that if you're ever going to have a native species, even if it's purchased elsewhere, you must be the person to find out your local regulations in your state, province or territory in your country. Do your homework first before it. Know your laws. Never take any fish species, aquatic life, anything from your aquarium and put it into a natural waterway. There is no excuse for that. That's how disease happens. Invasive species, it's never a good option. And in Minnesota, what are some of the requirements that we have?
Okay, so thanks for mentioning that, that it's so different. And those of you that were on really early, we did chat a little bit about minnesota has some of the tightest restrictions and you can say right or wrong or whatever, but to understand how to follow the regulations, I always think it's really important to understand why they're in place. So Minnesota has got an incredible value of natural resources. It's our tourism base, our livelihood, what keeps us all sane when it's dark for six months out of the year. So we try and do everything we can to protect that. One of the biggest threats to any native environment is invasive species. So those rules and regulations are put into place with that goal of protecting our native species in mind, that we don't want things brought in from some other country that's going to compete with our native habitat and out compete our native species. We want to maintain what we have. Again, they may seem overbearing for those of you that aren't in Minnesota, but it's just important to understand why they are there to try, to try and protect. So legally, the best to reference if you have any questions on any of this, is going to be Minnesota and our website and the fishing regulations. And on my computer screen right now, I actually have a web page up and our fishing regulations up.
And we will have those in the show notes below for you guys to click on from Minnesota. But again, you have to do it for your area. We have so many people.
Absolutely.
And that goes for any fish, not just our native fish. You should know that if something is banned in your state or certainly controlled, don't expect that even your pet store to know all that.
Any of you that are gardeners, it's the exact same thing. You can order yellow iris in Minnesota. It's 100% illegal to plant yellow iris in Minnesota because it's an invasive species. And some of these gardening companies, for a while, you would order blue flag iris, which is the native Minnesota plant, and they would send you a complimentary yellow iris as a thank you for ordering. It's not unique to the fish industry. It's every industry that if you're gardening, planting, trees, flowers, water, gardens, whatever it may be, make sure you're responsible enough to know what you're buying and what you intend to do with that and if things go bad, how you intend to dispose of it. But with fish, if you are purchasing game fish and there's a huge difference right there in just game fish, some fish in Minnesota are protected by regulations and some are not. So when I say game fish, it's going to be those fish that are commonly sought after by anglers. When I was little, I was told, well, if it's kind of a game to catch those fish, then they're game fish. So fishing, if you're whatever you're going to fish for, non game fish are going to be those fish that typically aren't targeted by anglers. So some of your minnows, some of your carper minnows, but some of those fish that you don't catch, I was going to say your stickleback tank is a non game fish. If you want to keep a stickle back in the aquarium, you knock yourself out. They are, they are fun, actually, and they're pretty hard to kill, and that's what makes them even more fun.
What do you consider bullheads?
Bullheads are not protected either, so they are non game fish. Minnesota, if you want to have an even more headache to add on top of your COVID fatigue headache, some of these regulations are not cut and dry. There are some gray areas. And so you kind of have to, depending on how deep you want to get into this, that's going to be the frustrating part on some of this, is it does kind of circle back. But bullheads are non game fish protected. They are considered rough fish, but then it is also illegal to transport live fish from a body of water. So that's kind of where it kind of backtracks a little bit of there is no actual clear thing. And then if you go into our fishing regulations, it is actually legal if anyone's on. Do you have like a live you have a live chat, right?
I certainly do.
I think you should give a free t shirt away to the first person. See how I'm giving your wife and there you go.
I'm good for a T shirt that.
Can Google the Minnesota fishing regulations and it's a pdf file. And if you go to page 35, you can tell me what the age on page 35 is about keeping fish. So ready, set, go.
Seven.
So there are some issues where the fish is not protected, but yet our own fishing regulations say that it's illegal to transport live fish. So you've kind of got to figure out which rule you want to break. Maybe, but there are ways to go about that. Let me know when someone finds page 35 of the DNR fishing regs.
Is it okay if I give myself a T shirt? Because I have it open.
Let's say I feed my bullhead a roofie.
That's joking or joking?
No, I'm not okay. Anyway, you feed your bullhead some roofies, and he's kind of drugged out. Is that transporting live fish or? I mean, if I want to take.
A bullhead with a roof, you can't.
Chloroform your bullheads well and blue gills or blue gills bullheads, sometimes you will see in your bait bucket. So if you were to go buy a scoop of fat headbinnos from a bait dealer, and I've done this many times, and I always look at what exactly I get in my scoop. I will get sticklebacks, I will get bull heads, I will get common shiners sometimes. And then I've got quite the deal, and I'll get fat head, and it's all kind of lumped together. And that's sometimes a fault of bait dealers not checking their traps real well, not knowing what they're selling, not sorting properly, whatever it may be. But you do get a lot of different species when you go buy fish. All right, that's one way.
So we have joey six fingers that found. I love that name. joey 16 years or older. If you don't mind, I'll read this aloud. Yes, please, again about fish for the aquarium. If you are older than 16, you can transport live fish for the display of home aquarium only if you purchase the fish from an authorized Aquaculture license and have documents as the sales receipt to prove it.
Okay, so that's what we were talking about before. So make sure if you have it, you need to prove where you bought it from, and you need to make sure you keep that receipt. The next part is the kicker, though.
I'll get into that in just a moment. Youth aged 16 and younger can legally transport certain live fish for displaying a homo aquarium. If so, if you're younger than 16, they legally caught the fish among the following species large mouth, smallmouth rock, bass, yellow perch, crappy, blue gill, pumpkin seed, green, orange, butterfly fish, black, yellow, and brown bullhead. No more than four fish of each species can be transported at one time. All fish are ten inches or less in length, and fish are not transported in the water taken from any lake or stream. You must bring bottled or tapped for transportation due to invasive species. So what you're saying is I need to bring, like, a nephew or something and do your dirty work. We need to do some hustling.
I got four kids.
There you go.
There you go. And one of them's got a driver's license.
You need the fish mule.
They'll be walking with them in a bottle of aquafina.
I love this, actually, because it keeps it fun. For kids. Honestly, that's who you were trying to get the audience in for anyway, right?
And the point is that if you're taking something to have in a home aquarium, the purpose of that home aquarium generally is education one way or the other. You guys, I'm sure, will admit that you learn something from your aquariums every single day. I know I learned something from mine every single day. And that's kind of where this gets at, is that it is designed to get kids interested and make sure that they're learning something and respecting it too, and they're not turning into gluttons. You can't go and harvest 1000 fat head meadows and try and cram them in a ten gallon tank and then kill them all and wonder what happened. So there's regulations on that. So this is an important part for Minnesota to lay out to make sure that we have the size, we have the species, we have the method, and we say you can't take water from the lake and that can take water from the lake is the same regulation that comes in with bait transfer. If you're fishing with a flow through bucket in the lake, you have to make sure if you want to keep your bait, you dump out all your water and you have another gallon tank or a gallon of water in your truck or something that you can swap out that lake water with again, for the spread of invasive species. So despite all of the licenses and the receipts and everything else, that all still applies. But if you're younger than 16, you go out and you get yourself a tank and you get some bass and bull heads and blue gills and collar. Good. There's so little that's totally cut and dry. And only one way, because we have this statement in there, and that's in our fishing regs, and that is the law with all of this, too. You kind of have to keep that in mind, though. I have two tanks in my house. They're my kids. One is my son's and one is my daughter's, and they have game fish in there and it's incredible. It's a blast.
So you basically need a permit to get a permit.
What's that?
You need a permit to get a permit kind of thing.
Well, unless you're a kid and then you don't have kids. Jimmy jeez.
No, I'm done.
And you don't need a fishing license if you're under 16 either. So if it's a kid tank, if I argue that I'm a kid of any age, I'm not going to get real far with the conservation officer or any law enforcement thing, then you would need to go down that path of that first paragraph of if you're older than 16, you can transport them. If you can prove where you bought them and you have your receipt and what it says about authorized aquaculture licensees, that's a whole other page. So if you have any more Google enthusiasts, you can Google the DNR web page. There's no T shirt for this Dnr.org. There's no more shirts to give away. But if you Google Mndnr.org and there's a search box once you get to that Minnesota DNR web page and if you just type in aquarium in that search bar, it should bring up a page that is just titled Pet and Aquarium Businesses. And that's going to give you all sorts of entertainment in the wee hours of the morning that you can just cycle through forever. But what it's going to tell you basically is that in order to sell fish in Minnesota, you have to go through a licensing process, and there's many that do. And what the primary purpose they're serving is to provide fishing in lakes that are not managed by the DNR. So in Minnesota, minnesota Department of Natural Resources Section of Fisheries, which is what I work for, takes the responsibility of managing the lakes that have public access, lakes that are open for all residents of Minnesota to use and enjoy. And part of our way of managing that lake is to ensure that there is a fishable population of native fish in those lakes. Now, if you live in the middle of the woods because you're looking for bigfoot again and you've got this tiny little lake on your property and you want to fish that, and so you call DNR and say, hey, will you come check my lake out and will you come stock fishing it? If it doesn't have a public access and if it is not accessible and usable by all people of the state, DNR isn't going to have anything to do with that lake. But if you still want to buy blue gills or whatever walleyes or northern pike or whatever it is, there is a list of licensed growers within the state that their business is stocking these lakes that people want to stock all on their own. So they're making their own little fishing pond. If you've ever been to like a trade show where they've got the trout fishing pond, for example, those are privately owned. It's a privately owned business, privately owned fish that they've raised and purchased on their own from some licensed growers. So that's kind of the main area where these licensed producers or growers in Minnesota are targeting is these smaller lakes that are not managed by DNR. And people want fish in their lake for whatever reason. So typically where they're getting those fish from are lakes where they have, as part of their licenses, sought permission to harvest these fish from. So they're often wild sources. Sometimes they're private lakes that they've had that for somehow or some way fish got into there and they've been using that as their brood source lake. As I said earlier, I can't think of any of them that are breeding captive fish from captive brood stock. And typically it's what they're stocking is bass, large mouth bass, blue gills, croppies walleyes. Sure there's one that does musk's, but he gets fry from the DNR.
That's getting real in the weeds.
What's that?
That's getting real, certainly in the weeds for some of our audience, for sure, but certainly necessary to know, right?
So when you're googling late at night, just know that that's where this is going, is targeted more for that because that's the industry in Minnesota.
Again, if you're in Minnesota and you are above 16 and you want to purchase yourself some native fish because that's the options you have. I believe there's like three pet stores in the metro area. One is actually in Forest Lake, forest Lake pets that do have the game fish on hand. Keep your receipt always for the entire life of the fish. Because if someone decides to audit you for some reason you need to prove that you've purchased those in the past. So keep those in record next to your dog shot paperwork because don't lose those. For sure. And that would be the way to handle it responsibly. And again, never let those species back into a native lake or waterway, ever.
If you are another googling enthusiast and you want to find a list of those all of the businesses that are licensed through the state of Minnesota and it would be the same, I would assume, in most other states. If you go to the state's register. So where all of the cosmetology and dental and all those people have their licenses filed with the state, they should also have a file of private aquaculture. With that file, at least in Minnesota, it will say the business name, the business address, and the species that they're licensed for. So that would be in case you don't remember where that pet store was, you can always go back to the state register and find that listing of licenses, just as you would if you want to check up on a contractor that wants to replace your tile floor, or whatever it may be, make sure that that business is licensed, and that's, again, being the responsible enthusiast, it's just another step that you have to take to make sure that you're not going to get in trouble for it.
I have a question.
Adam wants to know how much trouble you can get in.
Questions of legalities. What's been the latest? Craze is like the pygmy sunfish from Florida on that and I was interested in getting those. Can I bring those into Minnesota? They're not going to survive in Minnesota winter, but technically they're like a native Us fish. What are the rules on that?
I don't know for sure, Adam.
I would think that they have a list of banned species and stuff that you cannot import from other states. Goes by genres. Like, for instance, I don't believe we can even move or transport any type of salamander or axolotl species like mud puppies in and out of state, I can certainly provide that list as well. That's public. That's where, for instance, the commonly used in the aquarium weather loach is technically illegal in Minnesota, and that's up to date quite often. So I'll get that to you. But do you have any other details on that, mandy?
Well, on that web page where if you go to the DNR web page and you type in aquarium and it will come up with that pet and aquarium business, there is a list there as well. There are plants and then there's animals. And the plants on this are just as important as the animals, if not more, because they're more apt to survive in the conditions. But a few different species of catfish, the red swamp crayfish is on there, and that's what I've got personal experience with, and snakeheads and a bunch of other things. But that list is not complete, by all means. And like Robbie said, there's probably many other species that those involved with aquarium trades will be aware of. So I'm not totally sure on what that exact list is, but that would be another one to dig through the register for because I'm sure that list.
Is out there and I will have that in the notes as well, the show notes, because I already have it saved. Good, perfect. Well, Adam, you got any more questions?
No, because that'll get me into trouble.
If I ask you. darn right. You got to behave. Well again, mandy, thanks again for coming on. But before I let you go, we do have a few random questions that we're saving for the end of the podcast that weren't necessarily sunfish related. So we have up here, are there any restrictions on catching scuds in a public lake or stream with collecting plants or relocating with the intent of aquarium? So, specifically, I don't know if scuds is the proper term.
That's the term I use. They're amphipods, but I call them scuds because it's easier to say and it sounds cooler than amphipod.
Scud is very much aquarium.
Yes, right. There aren't any restrictions on them individually. The problem with collecting scuds is it's going to be really tough to harvest them cleanly. You're always going to have vegetation and you're always going to have water. So if you are looking to harvest them from a lake, I would really recommend thinking through your methods and making sure you have a way to rinse them and make sure you transport them in different water. I have had experience with harvesting some and actually the way I harvested them was off the floor of my boat and scooping them up and freezing them flat. And they actually work really well for winter fish food, for some of the fish that I've kept. But again, the problem is making sure that they're clean. So think through your methods how you're going to do it, and I highly recommend rinsing them and then transporting them in clean water.
Some of the rivers, especially because I live in perm, Minnesota area, so we have an otter tail river by us and in the past, because the reason that people want scuds because normally scuds are a problem in an aquarium. And I don't recommend putting scuds in your aquarium on purpose. They can be a bit of a nuisance for those that have nanoplanted aquariums. But if you're doing scuds for the sake of a food culture, a live food culture, there's not a whole lot of better things for some picky fish than making your own little scuds tank at home. And what I've done is taken the net, just gently scoop the side of a riverbank, and they'll be you'll see them propagate on the net. I just have a water bottle of my own, and I individually pick out scuds with a tweezer and put them in a water bottle. That's been my best method. There's none of the other grossness with it because let's say you screwed up. Let's say you didn't rinse your scud and you put something in your tank. That's how you get these crazy bacteria blooms. I've had to actually, just from me having sufficient gear by my aquarium dripped in, had this crazy explosive bacteria stuff I've never had before. And I had to wipe an aquarium clean. There's a lot of stuff that are in native waterways that will explode because you've emulated the perfect environment in your house. So rinse your scuds. Don't take any material.
There's a T shirt. I want to see a rinse your scuds shirt.
Rinse your scuds.
Blueberry pancakes.
Yummy, yummy. That was definitely a weird question. For sure.
It's not, though. Actually, it's a good one.
I was in zuba creations in Plain stowe, New Hampshire, this past weekend, and they had stalker scorpions for sale, adam and cages right on the sales floor. So, Adam, you've now created a cult craze in the podcast before manually mine for like, $30. Yeah, we're not supposed to have them in Minnesota, isn't that correct, Adam? I remember we did research during the podcast. We weren't supposed to, and it's not necessarily Death stalkers. There was a special variety of Death stalkers that you found in the story that went on the ladies baggage you got. And that one is, I believe, federally illegal because there's different types of Death Stalker scorpions because it was actually fatal to a lot of human beings.
Yeah, it was a 15 minutes kill.
Yeah, that's not a good thing. Adam, the death dockers you saw, probably illegal ones. Even getting a hold of them in accidental methods is a miracle. All right, next one. No, the next one was about stickleback. And I believe we answered that commonly in Minnesota, the three spine stickleback is what's here. And that's been a new aquarium craze as well, because they are so fun of how they breed. So certainly do your research on that. We'll be doing a future episode on stickleback because that's been another one by popular demand and honestly, out of the minnowsk things that are safe and legal to harvest, that's about the funnest. They're hardy and they make amazing tube nests.
When you're looking for Minnesota, what you're going to see is called brooks stickleback. That's going to be your native fish that you'll see most of the literature on in Minnesota.
I mean, I've never had a problem just going to a bait store and be like, hey, you got any stickleback? And they'll just give them to you free in a bag.
Yeah, because usually anglers will get pretty angry when you give them sticklebacks instead of fat heads.
They don't appreciate that.
No.
Well, you gentlemen got any other questions for mandy?
You had said something about a silver shiner being illegal. Is there protected shiners in Minnesota?
Don't remember. So you'll have to remind my point when I said a silver shiner was illegal.
No, I'm just asking in general, is there any like, minerals that are illegal in Minnesota that tell harvest or anything that are protected?
There are some that are listed on the endangered species list. topeka shiners are always kind of the big one that everyone gets all worried about. That's southwestern Minnesota. I'm drawing a total blank right now on any species that are listed on the endangered species list that you would actually see. There are some species of special concern. There's leased starters that are listed as a species of special concern and those would be illegal to have, I think, just based on what the listing of them would be, but nothing that I can think of that you would commonly see. I can tell you what some of my favorites are if you got more Google enthusiasts that want to look at them. Banded kilifish.
We have banded kilifish in Minnesota. Are you kidding? Did not know that.
Yeah, that actually is if you want to go way off into the weeds. Again, there's some research out there that says, again, for Minnesota people that are familiar with fish, walleyes are our deal. And people always focus on the perch population, which is their primary food source. But there's some research floating around out there that says banded kilifish are a better ecological indicator of a lake's ability to support a walleye population than any other fish. So banded killy fish are awesome. Our Minnesota banded killy fish are probably going to be different than what you may know as an aquarium trade band. Banded killy fish and just like plants, you can have one species of fish can have the same Latin scientific name and 20 different common names. Kind of just make sure what you're looking at. And I'm really bad at remembering my Latin from college and what the Latin name of all these fish are. But daddy Kelly fish are super cool in an aquarium. If you're rock bass for the kids aquariums. Rock bass are awesome. They're the most easygoing, laid back, great community fish. Iowa darter happens to be my absolute favorite fish of ever, and those actually do really well in an aquarium. Blunt nose minnows. I had a blunt nose in a tank that I had for about four years, which is long for a minnow. And that one was really cool and he was a bossy little bugger. But some of those are really neat. And just as you get to know the personalities of your different aquarium fish, too, people that aren't total geeks like I'll use us, realize that all those fish have such different personalities and they're really cool, and once you watch them for a while, it's just really neat. But outside of those, I can't think of anything that you would find that you would have to be worried about.
And most of them are way south if they are on the list. I only see five here that are listed.
Yeah. I would use extreme caution if you are wandering around looking to collect things in southeast Minnesota trout streams or trout streams in general, southeast Minnesota, northeast Minnesota, or any designated trout stream anywhere else in the state, because our designated trout streams usually are spring fed. They're an active flowing situation where you don't have a lot of those murky backwaters, and they just tend to have a really unique fish community in them. And they're not very abundant anymore because of habitat conditions. So it's kind of just a good rule of thumb. If you're in a really unique habitat situation, you can kind of assume there's something there that's probably protected. So I wouldn't recommend harvesting anything out of a trout stream. That's kind of a safe, just general road to live by, I think.
Wonderful. You had something, Jimmy?
I had nothing.
No, you're just messing with Adam.
Oh, I was just messing with Adam. No, I just thought I asked about bullheads earlier, and I think one of the cool things that I see every spring is the baby bullhead school that you see near the shores and they look like a little black moor when they're inch and a half, two inches. And you'll see maybe 100, 200 bullheads schooling together in a large, bigger than a beach ball size mass of just schooling around in the shallow waters. And I think that's the coolest thing ever. And when I was a kid and I lived in North Dakota, so I didn't care about the Minnesota dnr, I would just steal some bull heads and put in my aquarium. But I was seven and I didn't know better.
Hey, that's legal. Yeah.
There we go.
There you go.
Seven is it is actually. A bullhead or two in an aquarium will clean up everything, but they will also get super bossy and eat everything and grow fast and turn into jerks. So keep that. But there have been in lake situations, when you see those huge mass of bullheads. There's been some lake associations that have kind of taken it upon themselves to remove those big masses, and because as bullheads mature, they do tend to uproot sediment, they uproot plants, and kind of aren't always the best for a lake ecosystem. In high densities, everything in moderation, including moderation and bullheads. So by harvesting out those young of the year bullheads, it isn't a bad thing for the lake, I'll put it that way.
Yeah.
If you had a large net, you could easily catch 100 in a scoop without a problem.
They make awesome fertilizer.
Wow.
Which is an actual approved use for rough fish. I was going to ask that is approved. So all the folks that are spearfishing and bow fishing and harvesting carp out of the lakes, primarily in the spring, hopefully the use that those are serving is fertilizer. They also smoke them, but fertilizer is an approved use for rough fish.
That's incredible.
There you go.
Well, mandy, there's a guy down here that they both fish, and then they just throw them in a wood chipper on the field. And I was like, Is that even legal?
Yes.
They said, you can do it. I'm like, yes, it is. What is not legal is when you throw them in the ditch right down from the access where you access the lake from. That's not legal.
Okay. Would it be legal to throw it in your ex wife's yard?
Yes.
No, not unless you plant her flowers first, and then you can fertilize those flowers.
All right.
With a wood chipper.
I'll just go up with a wood.
Chipper to £300 of rough fish and.
Just see the whole house. Even grumpier old men had to ask permission from the dmr to do the bid.
Oh, we're all going a heck of a hand basket.
All right, well, thanks again, manny. You got anything for us?
You're welcome. We can go off in the weeds in all sorts of different directions, so I hope this kind of stayed somewhat on point and maybe we learned something. Or not. I definitely had a blast and always happy to join you guys again whenever you're short for content.
Trust me, you've been in high demand for a while. You're by far not short for content, so I'll have to have you on again. And next time, we'll have to have you on for sturgeon caviar. No, I'm kidding.
Joking.
That was a joke. Come on now.
Where'S Rob for Christmas? To jail.
The first time I was on, we had hoped that maybe you guys could come back and do a live on scene podcast from our hatchery in the spring, and I'm hoping that 2021 will bring that possibility.
I did not went out. I called you. We did what we could, right?
So hopefully 2021 will bring us some better opportunities. I'm always happy to join. You guys are a lot of fun, and I appreciate what you're doing well.
Thank you, mandy. And again, if you guys like what you hear, go to aquariumgistpodcast combat. On the website, we have a tip jar. We have some merch coming, support our sponsors, helps all keep the lights on and keep the podcast going. We really appreciate it. And again, go to the links in the show notes for the Minnesota dnr to check some of the resources we talked about in the episode. And above all else, contact your local dnr, check out their web page, see what's legal before ever trying anything, and never put fish back into a natural water away from your aquarium.
Not unless you use a wood chipper.
We'll go with that.
I think we should in the tip jar. If we make enough money to get a wood chipper, I will film myself fertilizing the lawn at my ex wife's house. I'll just do that for you guys.
Anyways, until next week, thank you. Thanks, guys, for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are found, whether it be spotify, itunes, stitcher, wherever they can be found, like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this.
Is there a safe word? Tonight.
I'm having blueberry pancakes in Oklahoma.
You know, it's great when you have a return guest and then they're asking for the safe word. I'm.