Bluegills anyone?

[Charles Cairns]

  Anyone have any experience growing Bluegill?  In particular the hybrids or all-male batches?

[TCLynx]

I've never really heard about growing out all male bluegill.  That is normally what people do with Tilapia.

I have a mixed bag of regular old bluegill in a tank in my back yard and some of them are over 12-14 ounces in less than a year of having them while others are still quite small.  (6 ounces is big enough to eat a bluegill.)

[Jon Parr]

I'm new to bluegill, Charles, but I just got 2250 in my outdoor tank a couple of weeks ago.  I got them from a local hatchery, and I can tell you they are very weak transporters.  They make the trip okay, but are very susceptible to fin-rot and infections from stress.  I lost all of 600 that I got shipped from Mississippi previous to this order, and 2-300 of this current order went belly up 3-4 days after stocking. My advice? Absolutely with no exceptions add them to a salted quarantine tank at .5%, and keep them there for 3-4 weeks before adding them to your system (that is if your system already has other fish in it). Use course rock salt available here at OSH for $5 per 50 lbs, very cheap insurance. It's a surprising amount of salt, 40 lbs for my 1000 gallon Q tank. Salt weighs about as much as water, so volumetric measurements are ok (pint=pound, quart=2 lbs, etc) Add the salt directly to the water all at once. This will slowly dissolve so as to not shock the fish. I have also heard to pre-dissolve the salt and then add it, but the technical research I found said otherwise. I wish somebody had told me, so I'm passing it on. By the way, you can dip them in a 3% solution for one minute, according to a paper I read. Some plants will do ok in .5% salt, but I'm just doing partial water changes to eliminate ammonia for the salt period.

Whatever you do, transition them slowly. I moved a scoop of them from the salted tank to a fresh tank of the same pH and temp, and one of them died instantly from the shock. Mine were from a pellet-fed pond, but they didn't eat anything for a week.  Oddly, the first thing they did eat was duckweed, followed by midge larvae, and then started taking rabbit food and Aquamax. I'm relieved to be past the worst, I hope. They sure are beautiful and fun to watch, but way way way more finicky than tilapia.

[Jon Parr]

I've also not heard of all-male bluegill, and a quick search held no surprises.  Apparently the technology exists to make triploid sterile bluegill similar to treating carp, by subjecting the eggs to pressure.  Bluegill are sporadic spawners in the first place, and heavy stocking discourages the mood as well, they need gravel to make a nest in, and if any do manage to breed and the young make it past larval stage, the adults will pick them off.  Can't see a reason to go all males.  Hybrid bluegills are not sterile, but they revert to green sunfish not bluegill.

[TCLynx]

I didn't have much trouble when I got my bluegill, but it's only an hour drive from the fish farm to home for them so not as much time to pollute the water they are transported in.

Now I only salt to between 1-3 ppt in my system when I know I'm going to be stressing the fish a lot or when I see illness or disease.  Most plants (other than strawberries) do fine with it.

As to just dumping the salt in and letting it dissolve, if you have a separate sump tank where the salt can dissolve without the fish, that is fine.  You don't really want to put the salt into a tank with the fish, especially if they are a type of fish that will rest still near the bottom of the tank since if they rest against the salt before it has fully dissolved, it can irritate their skin or "burn" them.  That is probably more of an issue for Catfish and Koi that are more likely to rest on the bottom.

Now I used to have a 100 gallon tank that I would put new fingerlings in for quarantine but I was constantly having several fish per week go belly up in that tank.  Even with checking the water quality, aeration and temperature I couldn't figure out why that tank was sick.  I finally quit using it and have decided that bigger tanks are better.  I seem to normally only have about 1-2% or less losses in any of my bigger tanks while that 100 gallon tank was approaching 50% losses.

[George]

I've had 150 or so mixed-sex Coppernose since Dec and plan to selectively breed them beginning next year.  I don't expect breeding to be much of a problem but we'll see.  There is no hatchery close by so setting up a separate bedding tank will be less trouble than driving 3 hours one way to pick them up.  In the wild, they breed several times per year.  I'm pleased thus far with the growth rate and there is no need to heat or cool water so it's working out thus far.  A few died early on but it was likely related to incomplete cycling.  Good luck. 

[George]

TC, I'm impressed with your results.  Two years to two pounds is probably realistic and they may continue to grow over their lifetimes. 

Instead of driving three hours one way to buy fish again, I plan to selectively breed bluegill, probably beginning next spring.  I'm looking forward to trying it. 

[TCLynx]

And bluegill are commonly eaten at well less than a pound.  I would say selectively eat the ones that are not growing out as fast and breed the ones that are growing fast to hopefully get faster growing fish in the future.

[Carey Ma]

Does anyone use aloe vera to replace slime coat on stressed fish?

[TCLynx]

I have once done a net dip in water with aloe and salt water when I had to do more netting in the Catfish tank than I thought was wise.  I think dipping the net in a strong mix of aloe and salt water between forays into the fish tank may have helped ease any abrasions the net caused to the fish.  At least I don't think I lost any catfish after that handling.

I think Aloe is the primary active ingredient in one of the aquarium products meant to help slime coat.  I would be kinda cautious in using it though since adding anything to the water is sometimes worse than doing nothing depending on the situation but I would probably use aloe in a salt dip if I thought to have it set up before it is needed.  Takes some time/effort to fillet the aloe leaves and mush the m up enough to be useful in the water.

[Charles Cairns]

Check out Bluegill research at Univ. of Missouri... they say that male bluegill mature quicker and to a heavier weight than females, and have a method for sorting the fry.  Maybe that's why some of yours are bigger than others.

TCLynx said:

I've never really heard about growing out all male bluegill.  That is normally what people do with Tilapia.

I have a mixed bag of regular old bluegill in a tank in my back yard and some of them are over 12-14 ounces in less than a year of having them while others are still quite small.  (6 ounces is big enough to eat a bluegill.)

[Jon Parr]

Is this the site you refer to?

http://m.deltafarmpress.com/missouri-research-bluegill-moving-pond-...

If so, they suggest either hormonal sex reversal or manual sexing fish at a certain size, 40-70 mm (what's it take, a half year to get that big?). Doesn't make sense to me. And for what? To get table sized fish in two years instead of three? Also, the research was designed for lakes, I think, not closed loop systems. Like I said before, bluegill are not likely to waste much energy on breeding in a well-stocked closed system anyway, and actually getting them to spawn is lucky from what I've read (and I've read a log because I want to raise bluegill fingerlings). Anyway, just my $.02

[Charles Cairns]

Yes, that is one.  Also see www.ksuaquaculture.org/species/bluegill,hybrid.htm.

What I am most interested in is some type of pan fish that will bite on a worm for kids pay-to-fish ponds.  I was thinking Bluegill, but perhaps another species would be better.  Catfish?  Crappie?

Jon Parr said:

Is this the site you refer to?

http://m.deltafarmpress.com/missouri-research-bluegill-moving-pond-...

If so, they suggest either hormonal sex reversal or manual sexing fish at a certain size, 40-70 mm (what's it take, a half year to get that big?). Doesn't make sense to me. And for what? To get table sized fish in two years instead of three? Also, the research was designed for lakes, I think, not closed loop systems. Like I said before, bluegill are not likely to waste much energy on breeding in a well-stocked closed system anyway, and actually getting them to spawn is lucky from what I've read (and I've read a log because I want to raise bluegill fingerlings). Anyway, just my $.02