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Morning update.
Just feed the fish. Many more fry began to eat. They displayed distaste towards flakes, spitting them out, but loved the freeze dried blood worms. The 1 that started to eat immediatly taught at least a quarter of the others. This is a step in the right direction.


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Keep with providing flakes. Flakes complete while dried bloodworms are probably not. You can also mix the two immediately prior to feeding. We call that co-feeding.

Will likely take a couple of days before satiation involves actual gut fill. Gut fill needed for good growth.


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Fry still alive and growing albeit slowly. They are on the cusp of being fry now, nearly a week behind full siblings of same brood being kept indoors.

I couple dragonfly nymphs also present and likely getting a couple of the fish. Midges likely dominated the dragonfly's fare. Still too many fish as they will over run forage base soon. Need to cull about three quarters of them as all I want is between 10 and 20. This late summer has been exceptional for the tank water temperature. Normally temperatures would consistently be in the lower 60's by now yet we are staying in the upper 60's to lower 70's. Still below optimal.


I did not intend to post this here.

Last edited by Jim Wetzel; 09/19/17 08:37 PM.

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How about an indoor brood vs outdoor brood pic at same age?

Last edited by ewest; 09/19/17 02:33 PM.















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Quick update
Fry eating very well. Have gotten one to eat out of my hand. They are a lot more used to flakes now and almost all will readily consume flakes. Ravenous little buggers don't let the blood worms hit the water anymore.


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Some time has passed so I'd like to give an update.

Fish are feeding well and growing fast. I swear they are bigger every morning. Only 1 mortality because it never caught on to eating. Pretty sure they are all GSF at this point which is not a problem. So I come to my question, most of the fish are the same green color but 1 or 2 are significantly darker, looking more blue than green. I have seen this before in GSF but why does it happen? They live in the same place. Is it gender or a genetic thing? Thanks.

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Now you are in the middle of how I live. The color changes can be a function of social interaction. Your photograph rivals mine in not depicting what you are describing. The fish can change coloration in seconds. Are the darker fish generally smaller and possibly positioning themselves away from larger, possibly aggressive fish?


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Looks like I will be breeding some combination of Green Sunfish, Warmouth and Bluegill come January with 4H youth doing aquaculture projects. This may promote some replication of what you are seeing. We already have several 75-gallon aquariums with Green Sunfish so I might be able to look and see if something similar is going on and can be photographed.

Darn dog just unplugged my computer!

Last edited by Jim Wetzel; 10/10/17 05:50 AM.

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Can't photograph color differences because I have to turn the light on to get a picture and the fish immediatly lose their color. I'll try something different tonight. The darker fish are medium-large comparatively and are rather aggressive.


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Do the aggressive fish exhibit a dark spot on the posterior part of dorsal and possibly anal fins? Also look at eyes and opercular tabs.


I am in lab now and will try to setup to photograph what mine do. Background color might be an issue. Aggressive fish often try to maximize contrast with background.


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Not even sure this is the right fish. They lose their color when I turn on the light. Very hard to photograph.

First picture close up, second comparison to normal fish.

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Dark morph adult.

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Brats are what I call the fish in the first three images. Dorsal spot very evident as well as other features I mentioned above.


Adult show the dark spot in the anal fin as well. Any Green Sunfish adult is capable of getting dark like that. Same goes for brat look which is adopted by Bluegill as well.


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So you are saying they adopt those colors when they are annoying?


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They adopt the coloration and the behavior that goes with it to defend something that is defensible, like predictable patches of food or cover. So colored fish show they are ramped up and ready to fight. The "brats" attack other fish entering their areas either driving them off or distract the others enough so they can not eat as effectively. In my larger tanks, a brat can almost exclude other sunfish from an area that can approach a square yard in size. My largest Hand-paint Bluegill (a female) outright attacks the other Bluegill that approach area under light where she gets first dibs on flying insects that either fall into water or come down close enough her to jump up for it. She only backs off, and just a little, when she is satiated. When we run feeding trials, each tank will have a couple brats that attempt to drive tank-mates off as fish are hand-fed. Our protocol with hand-feeding insures that all get most of what they want. What can be a problem is when we under feed or use an automatic feeder that meters out feed too slow. The brat can exclude other fish from eating setting up for size differential pretty quick.

You can see all this in ponds as well. Green Sunfish juveniles will defend areas near a nesting colony where they sneak in to eat nest bound broods. Bluegill will defend patches of bottom where they can pick of items like blood worms an tubificid worms they treat almost like gardens. I have seen Bluegill defend cover patches like a clump of plants where fish is apparently able to watch more diligently for zooplankton floating by. Sneaker males sometimes will also adopt the brat approach coloration.

Being a brat may have cost going with it. That would be why not all do it. Other sunfish species do it although much of color pattern change differs. Juvenile Smallmouth Bass and Spotted Bass do it to an extreme and the tri-colored tail is key to the display.


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Your dark fish also look like F1 hybrids between (Green Sunfish and Bluegill). Pures of both do as I described and hybrids might be really prone to it.

Do you have a Zebra Danio in with those guys?


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Originally Posted By: Jim Wetzel
Do you have a Zebra Danio in with those guys?


Yes, that is why I have already purchased a tank separator so at the first signs of hostilities to other fish I can separate the SF fry from the various tropical fish. If you would like I'd be glad to elaborate on what I've stuffed into the tank.

As far as them being F1 hybrids, I would call it good news because it would be the first signs that the BG, not just the GSF have spawned. They are trapped so we will find out if you are right in the coming months. It'll be interesting to see if the growth rates are different and if the HBG will pass up the 3 GSF fry that currently are the biggest.


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I have a sediment pond that leads into my main pond. I stocked it with RES and CNBG. A few GSF somehow got in. I have lots and lots of hybrids produced from this small 1/10 acre pond.

I fish it heavily a few times a year to remove many of the larger fish. The GSF get tossed or tail fin clipped for bass food in the main pond, and the hybrids, CNBG and RES get transferred to the main pond.

We have been eating quit a few of the hybrids from the main pond in the 8-9" size range that originally came from this sediment pond stock.

I really like the hybrids. Grow fast, bite a hook easily, and fight hard. Some I believe to be CNBG/GSF and some RES/GSF. Once in a great while I see what I think might be a CNBG/RES but rare and not really sure about it.

The GSF characteristics are much easier to spot.

Last edited by snrub; 10/12/17 10:54 AM.

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It's been a while and I'd like to update. Largest has grown to at least 3 inches. Quite a few are displaying adult colors and aggression towards each other. A few stragglers are still under 2 inches. Planning on separating the tank this weekend and moving them up to bigger food. The tropical fish have taken a hit from the GSF but not as expected. They ended up starving out the smaller less aggressive fish. They never attacked them, just ate all the food. No big deal. Anyone know how I can sex them? Would like to know if I have any females.

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Squeeze them gently to strip for gametes.


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There are several good threads on coloration and its many aspects. Jim notes the ones seen most in confined quarters (aquariums, small tanks or crowded conditions).
















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How important is it to know sex? Do you intend to tank spawn them?

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It is not that important that I sex them. I mainly want to use the information to see the sex distribution of yoy in my pond by using this small sample. Also I want to see the growth difference and temperament difference.


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You need to get a good percentage of the Green Sunfish fry to get a reasonable estimate of sex ratio. Minimum I have to be using is 30 to 40% unless the population is very large. Size at time of collection is important; make certain you get good representation of all sizes classes.

Something really screwy goes on with sex ratios within a brood (full-sibling) as ratio can be very much off from 50:50, very much. This is with pure, not hybrids.


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I don't know if these are pure bred offspring or hybrid offspring because these seem like normal GSF but the largest fish in the pond are hybrids.


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