In one of my old threads I posted some pictures of some BEAUTIFUL Pumkinseed/BG hybrids. They were very nice size (larger than typical pumpkinseed). It would be neat to work with PS and try to hybridize them with BG or even RES. RES do not do well in the far north. I need to try to dig up that thread.
I'm curious what other water conditions, (pH, hardness, clarity, calcium content) might relate to spotfin success. Our lakes do not have them here and I'm not sure why. They seem to to love my pond and reproduce like crazy and I have only a few spawning structures. This year I took out my spawning structures and so very few egg remnants on them. Yet I have had at least 2 crops of tiny SFS. I'm thinking they just find their own crevices and go to it. I did change my big square foam insulation turtle floats for a more natural looking large floating section of tree trunk this year. I figure the logs look more natural (my wife likes that look better than bright green grass carpet on a foam square). The logs required a little bit of foam insulation board under them as they water logged and started sitting lower in the water. The turtles seem to like them just fine and all the natural crevices in the wood hopefully are what the SFS used to lay eggs this season.
I am still trying to figure out how to trap them at will to share with others. They don't seem to readily enter into standard minnow traps. They come into the shallows in huge numbers at night but spook away pretty easily with any light source. Since they have no fear when pellets are available I'm wondering if I could create some type of enclosure that could be remote control from a distance closed and I could use repeated feeding of pellets to come into the enclosure opening while feeding and then close the exit (or rapidly lift the enclosure up out of the water with some long handled device?
Not sure what you mean by 'tile structure'
Are you doing reproduction trials in an indoor tank our outside in a pond?
