The great social experiment

[fishboy]

heres a crazy tank story
A friend of our family has a house on bay and a 15 gallon tank. He fills the tank with bay water straps a HOB on it and buts in baby game fish(including a small fluke), bait fish, crabs, and a eel them wtches how they socialize and labels it the great social experiment...it fails as mostly everything dies. Then his neighbors move and the people who but the house get a 100+gallon tank with filters, air pump, etc. and are going to CHUCK IT so my friend offers to buy it and gets it for free and after resupporting his deck and get 3 guys on it he moves it to a shadey spot on his deck then he gets the whole thing setup with bay water(and filters it clean) then begins to add whatever he catches. Last time i saw it he had about
(6) 4"-8" bluefish
(5) 7"-14" weakfish
a half liter container of 1.5" live baitfish
(2) 6" flounders
(1) 5" oyster toadfish/rockfish(the coolest thing)
He's also considering a small northern puffer, a eel, and maybe some crabs

Right now the tank is mearly very high end brackish(it seamed better to post it in SW because they are SW fish) and he's thinking of switching it to full marine conditions and getting tropical marine fish or local marine fish. i think it is a interesting experiment

[mlefev]

Do you mean around 100 gallons, or 100+ as in closer to 200?

I think it sounds like a death-trap if he keeps adding more fish in there if it's on the smaller end of the scale. I'm not a saltwater person, but it seems full enough as is (if not too full, since some of those guys may still be growing). And the water conditions...to me it seems you either have brackish or saltwater. Fish that live in one or the other will get stressed out by inappropriate water conditions, if not die.

I'm sure I will be corrected by all the saltwater people, but it still seems like more than a stretch to get this to work. Plus I don't like expiraments that result in people killing off their fish just for the sake of seeing if it "could" work.

[redpaulhus]

He also may be violating a whole slew of state fisheries laws - as far as I know, every state has minimum size laws for flounder, fluke, and weakfish (especially since the populations for all 3 species are in decline). Some also have size limits on bluefish (but not all). He may also need a collecting permit (shellfish permit) to collect the crabs, and they might need to meet size limits as well.

A "legal sized" fluke or flounder would require at least a 150g tank - and I'd be hesitant to put more than one in a tank that small. I'd probably go even larger for the weakfish. Blues I wouldn't put in with other fish, and I'd go 500g plus...

Oyster toadfish should be no problem legally, but they are voracious eaters - any/all tankmates are potential prey sooner or later if they are not quite a bit bigger than an adult toadfish. I'd go with a large tank, big skimmer, and lots of water changes.

Most of what we see as "baitfish" on the east coast are either killiefish, silversides, menhaden, "herring", or mullet. The killies do great in aquariums, silversides can do ok if they are collected carefully, but can be easily injured. Menhaden or herring are also very sensitive during collection, and hard to keep healthy IME. Mullet are pretty bulletproof, assuming you get them small and don't overcrowd.

Here in Mass, we can't keep gamefish even if they are legal sized - from Fish and Game Wardens I've talked to here, none of those can be legally kept in a home aquarium here. Fines vary, but they basically take all your gear if they catch you, and up here its like $500 per fish... not something I'm willing to take a chance on... I'd definately check your local laws before setting up a tank like that.

Also - these aren't fish that you can just toss some flakes in - they have pretty specialized diets.

[fishboy]

most of the stuff he catches by line or are stuck in his crab traps the only thing that might be under sized is 1 weakfish and the flounders, also crabing licenses aren't required unless you have more then 2 traps, and by 100+ i mean around 110

[Scuba Kid]

having a tank full of northern fish outside in the heat is his first mistake. the temp is going to go up from what the temp of the water he is collecting them from is and would probably cause most of the fish to die. he would need a chiller to keep the tank water from rising, and there are probably more problems that will arise in keeping a tank outside. what is he going to do with it when the seasons change? and like redpaulus said, he can get in a lot of trouble for having undersized game fish, and game fish at all if it is illegal. your friend is making a lot of mistakes if he is trying to keep these fish alive and keep himself out of trouble.

[mlefev]

It just seems like bad karma to me. To trap a bunch of fish together that can't live together and survive in the same conditions is cruel. Granted, a lot people say it's "just a fish", but I wouldn't like to think of the same situation and have some other creature saying it's "just a human". I'm stetching reality (exaggerating) a bit here, but doing anything to an aquatic animal when we're seeing great reduction in the numbers of sea-life is simply a bad idea.

[fishboy]

like i said though he's thinking of ending the experiment after this year and buying his aquarium fish

[mlefev]

Yeah, that sounds like a lot better of a plan. Especially with that big of a tank and setup.