I would love a native tank, I always wanted 5-6 yellow perch in my 65g (we have some awesome colorful jumbos up here). But in Canada it is near impossible to get a license to keep natives, and it is a research license to boot. And the paperwork required to ship in the similar US natives is astronomical. And then if fish & wildlife get wind of natives, Canadian or other, the hassle just isn't worth it.

You could always bring a few home from the local pond.

The sunfish are pretty, but aggressive. My brother found or caught a few for one of my mom's many outdoor ponds, and they didn't get along with anything.

If I had the room outside, I'd give a snapper or two a home. They can be mean bastards, but once they get used to you they're pretty chill. I have eastern boxies and I guess by this point Red Ear Sliders might as well be called natives.

Not exactly native, but Diamondbacks are in MD and South Jersey too. Close enough I suppose.

Well, gonna collect a few natives this summer. Still up for that, MC? Orange-throat darters have been moved to endangered status in Wyoming, so probly won't receive permission to collect my own. May contact the Colorado fish and game to see how they feel about a non-resident collectin' a half dozen or so. Can still collect iowa darters, johnny darters, and plains killies, though. Not sure I wanna go through the licensing headache for keeping game fish species.

Diamondback, saint? As in terrapin or rattlesnake? Oh yeah, nothin' venomous...

WYite

Thats it I'm going fishing today!

Terrapins. There's no native diamondback rattlers in PA. We got eastern massasauga and timber rattlers though..

does anybody here keep channel cats? or know how they breed? im going to get some soon for my 500 gal pond gonna put some bass and maybe bluegill in there. any help would be appreciated

I've had 'em. They come in now and again when people get the little cutie two inchers and don't know they turn into cutie 3 footers.

The fish farm breeds 'em, so I can ask for ya next time I'm up there if there's anything special you'd need to do.

ok thanks SF

D'oh! I had my sarcasm detector set to off.

Should be back up and running after the Easter invasion.

Sunfish are really just the NA version of SA cichlids. Me and my Papa went fishing for bream (Sunfish) and we kept getting little 2-3 inchers and we brought 5 home and put them in thepond. I say that was a mistake, we had 5 goldfish die and a koi that was mentally scarred for life! We spent a week, trying to get them out by hand and we just went to the bait shop, got a dozen crickets and with our poles, and careful manuvering from the giant koi, got them all out.

Comparing sunfish and cichlids is a good analogy, senegal. They do occupy similar ecological niches and have similar behaviors and breeding strategies. They are also as personable and intelligent as many of the cichlids.

Just to avoid any confusion to anyone not familiar with cichlids and sunfish, I'm gonna point out that sunfish are not cichlids, however. They do belong to the same order, Perciformes, and are closely related. But sunfish actually belong to the family Centrarchidae, while cichlids belong to the family Cichlidae (go figure, eh?)

WYite