Won't be at least till we get the new house, but once I start I'll post pics
(By the way the same methods also produced huge hybrid sunfish and green sunfish, and could probably be applied to other sunfish species).
Wild caught juvenile Big Mouth Bass and Bluegills... Help?
- Thread starter Mary Ann W.
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(By the way the same methods also produced huge hybrid sunfish and green sunfish, and could probably be applied to other sunfish species).
Won't be at least till we get the new house, but once I start I'll post pics
(By the way the same methods also produced huge hybrid sunfish and green sunfish, and could probably be applied to other sunfish species).
It would take years of genetic alteration to grow a bluegill 19", if even possible at all. Youd probably have to triploid them to achieve that size. I have seen some monster gills in public aquariums and store aquariums past 12". But I have never seen one or heard of one that size out of public or private water in my state. They seem to have a size cap of 11". If the 75 gal is wide I see zero issue in raising a single gill in a 75 gal for life.
My method in essence uses the same principles as triploidism i.e. Directs the energy to growth, not reproduction, and since I've grown bluegill to over 15 inches, I think if I control and mess with the variables I can get one to grow much bigger
Why do people try to get fish to their "maximum size" in captivity? You realise that even in the wild under perfect conditions the majority of fish will never get to their so called "maximum size". The world largest largemouth bass was huge, I can't remember if a bigger one has been caught since but it was caught in a lake in the south and was a not a normal fish, it had no sex organs or for some reason couldn't reproduce and wasn't really part of the LMB gene pool and IMHO should not have been allowed to hold the record.
Let's get real here, captivity will generally result in a smaller fish than the wild, depending on how seriously you take water changes it might get much smaller. The lack of record size doesn't detract from the beauty of the fish or enjoying it in captivity. I think we really need to back away from this idea that if a fish doesn't reach some arbitrary size limit then it is somehow not being taken care of correctly. Even wild fish have populations with different size variations and sometimes it has to do with the environment as much as genetics.
If you want to keep a population of fish that tend toward being very large and you want them to live long lives then choose a large tank. If I was going to keep a LMB I'd want a 225 or more if I intended to experiment with breeding them and whatever. But a 100 gallon would be ok just to keep an individual for a reasonable life span. Mixing an LMB with bluegills is like mixing a flathead catfish with bullheads, at some point the bullheads are just going to be food for the flat head...
Let us not discourage people from keeping fish by implementing unreasonable expectations...
To be honest I would say that a careful keeper who does water changes with some regularity should be able to keep 3 to 5 bluegills in a 75, I doubt they'd get to be 12" more likely 6 to 8 inches but they would still be nice fish and if feed and cared for should show some really good colors.
Again IMHO choosing the right fish is the key, choose a sunfish species that has a small maximum size, you can keep more of them and a more varied species list. A tank with madtoms, blue spots, black bands, top minnows, mollies, or if you prefer a predator then gambusia and redfin pickerel can be added to the tank when the sunfish get large. makes for a very interesting display and doesn't give people the impression they have to have a public aquarium class tank to keep native fishes...
The current world record is a non triploid bass from Japan , prior to that it was a fish from mission viejo in California,there hasn't been a world record lmb from the southern u.s in a loooooong time, so your info is old ,outdated.
And while there are a variety of factors affecting growth, most bluegill are easily capable of reaching 12 inches under captive conditions, which I have done many times with quite a few catch locales, unlike in largemouth bass, bluegill max size is determined primarily by enviormental conditions.
Furthermore lmb and bg are rather easy to keep together once bg reach at least 8 inches.
A 24 in long lmb has a gape of only 6 inches.
Well i am old so shoot me for being a fish keeper for 55 years.
Human children are capable of reaching 8' should I be criticized because none of mine reached 6'?
Why is it a prerogative to try to get fish as big as possible? As long as they are healthy why work so hard to get them so big and yes LMB are affected by their environment as well. I do fish sampling and wild fish populations vary in size due to environment and genetics which are of course driven by environment over time.
I know of a population of redfin pickerels that are almost black with bright red fins and dark green vertical stripes but none of them get past 5" .
It's silly to judge success in fish keeping by one parameter like size.
Definitely agree with you, genetics is important, but I always try to identify the most important factors for each species.
In growing big largemouth bass its: genetics, sex, and enviorment in that order of importance.
In growing big bluegill its: enviorment, food,
Competition.
And sex of fish doesn't seem to matter.
As far as growing fish to their max potential size : it shows your understanding and care of the fish species, it's not a requirement, but a devotion .
I understand your devotion to the fish, I'm there brother, but size should a be a product of the devotion not the goal of it.
Regardless my main gripe is how people who start threads asking for help and advice are met with this almost condescending attitude of why they cannot keep said fish. I understand that fish aren't disposable and shouldn't be considered such but the attitude of trying to tell people that fish are so difficult that people with small aquariums are somehow less than the rest of us is quite self destructive to the hobby. If people had been that way when i was starting out I probably never would have started keeping natives... or even fish for that matter since natives preceded tropicals by a large amount...
