I've had a chain pickerel for about a year now in a 45 gallon bow front aquarium and it is almost 7 inches. The 7 inch pickerel is by itself. In another 40 gallon breeder tank I've set up a native tank with a 3 inch pickerel, a 2 inch largemouth bass, a group of three 2 inch pumpkinseed sunfish, a pleco, and a yo yo botia. The only reason I put the yo yo in with my native tank was to control the snail population. Now there are hardly any snails if any at all. What can I use in my larger pickerel's (named T-Rex) tank to also control the snails?? Keep in mind T-Rex eats anything that touches the water
Pickerel diet
- Thread starter PickerelProSC
- Start date
Hmm, most Darters, especially Greensides are the best snail control you can have in a tank, even better than loaches in my experience. However, even a large adult Greenside, which would be 4-6", would still be risky to keep with a chain pickerel. I'd personally just ignore the snails and cull them as feeders for other fish when they get to abundant but maybe a large enough clown loach could work. I don't trust Esox species with anything less than half of their size and I've even seen pike try to eat other pike just a few inches shorter than them.
Yea T-Rex really likes to be by himself... Probably because he was wild caught from a river. Thanks for the advice. I'll probably just cull them like you said. My yo yo botia in my other tank loves snails and I think my pumpkinseeds might be eating some too. The smaller pickerel seems to get along fine with all my fish. I'm sure once he gets bigger he'll tolerate less though. What do you think about a crawdad?? Would T-Rex eat it too?
I haven't tried it myself, but redear sunfish get quite large and are used by some for snail control.
Personally, if I were you I would grow out the pumpkinseeds you already had to the size they're safe from chain pickerel as pumpkinseed's main diet in the wild is snails and zebra mussels.
I like that idea. I'll probably do that in a few months the pumpkinseeds are still too small for now. Right now they mainly eat flake food and blood worms and every now and then they'll snag a guppy meant for the pickerel and largemouth bass.
