Actually here's a small excerpt from Morris' white paper.
Would it be possible to take four tank, and have one for fry raising, one for brine shrimp raising (to feed the fry, and the other two tanks for further advanced redear or redear/bluegill hybrid to raise? That would be my ultimate goal for this whole project would be to create thousands of redear/bluegill hybrids that were feed trained.
Even though past production of sunfish has been mostly extensive production in ponds, there has been success with some intensive laboratory culture methods. Childers and Bennett (1961) hand spawned mature gametes from fish into petri dishes. Eggs from one or more mature females were stripped into damp petri dishes followed by stripping of milt from one or more males onto the eggs. After mixing milt and eggs, water was added and 2 min were allowed for fertilization to take place. The fertilized eggs were then placed into clean petri dishes containing aged tap water and allowed to become water hardened. After being rinsed with water, the petri dishes of fertilized eggs were then placed into aerated aquaria. They reported that fertilization occurred with several thousand eggs from various intergeneric crosses of sunfish. However, no hatching rates were given. When larvae became free-swimming fry, they were transferred to rearing ponds. Mischke and Morris (1998) developed a protocol for out-of-season spawning of sunfish in the laboratory. They placed artificial nests in indoor bluegill tanks and manipulated temperature and photoperiod. Initial temperature and photoperiod were established to mimic summer conditions (i.e., 72°F [22°C] and 16-h light/8-h dark). Over 2 weeks, the temperature was lowered to 59°F (15°C) and photoperiod was lowered to 8 hours of light/day. The fish were maintained at the winter conditions for 4 weeks and then returned to summer conditions over another 2-week interval. One month after the temperature and photoperiod manipulation, fish began spawning. By this method, they obtained 41 spawns, averaging 20,000 larvae each, from 24 female bluegill. The spawns were obtained over the winter months (December through May), and the same protocol was successful for production of hybrid sunfish (BG × GS) (Mischke et al. In preparation). Mischke (1995) and Mischke and Morris (1998) reported that larval bluegill did not digest commercial feeds at the onset of exogenous feeding. An initial period of feeding newly-hatched brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) nauplii was necessary for survival. They found, after feeding brine shrimp to larval bluegill for 7 days, that survival was greatest (about 23%) among larvae fed Fry Feed Kyowa7 B-250 (>55% protein, >10% fat, <3% fiber, <13% ash) (Biokyowa, Incorporated, Tokyo, Japan). They also found that feeding larval bluegill brine shrimp for 14 days before offering Fry Feed Kyowa7 B-250 produced about 43% survival.
Holding a redear sunfish is like running with scissors.
