Alright, so if I understand you correctly, separate the tank with egg crate, put more BG/SF in, get pellet food to feed them, and clean the tank often.
Also, I don't quite understand, do you mean more BG will stop breeding or stop stress from not being able to breed?
I'm not surprised that they are GSF but I'll hope at least one of them is a BG or a PS.
Thanks for the help.
Get them on feed of any sort that it not live, then get them onto pellets. Pellets can be your start if feed training goes well. Aggressive water quality management needed as I keep my sunfish when shooting for growth without reproduction.
Successful reproduction is not needed to complicate tank culturing sunfish. When fish are in good condition, temperature is between 72 F and 82 F, and photoperiod is has more than 14 hour light per 24-hour cycle it is hard to keep BG, Green Sunfish and PS from feeling the need to breed. I have bred many sunfish species in aquariums and ponds and it is too easy. So much so as to be problematic.
Several approaches can be used to suppress breeding. One is sorting fish by sex which your fish are still too small to do visually. Another is maintaining stocking density so high males cannot establish their nesting territories from which they launch attacks on tank mates. More fish in relatively tight confines also works to suppress formation of hierarchy. I have a dozen 75-gallon tanks where each is loaded with either BG, Green Sunfish, or F1 Green Sunfish x Orange Spotted Sunfish. Fish range in length from 3 to 5 inches. Stocking density is pushed to fish cannot single out a tank mate because they can recognize it. The sunfish are like chickens, they can remember only so many faces, thereafter they slip into a schooling mode where aggression is less of an issue.
Catch a bunch and lay them in shallow water in white container, then photograph. We may be able to find PS and BG that way.
