Warmouth Bass

[sharkayak]

A bunch of years ago (probably 18) I had a 25 Gallon tank with a Warmouth & a sunfish in it. Never did anything special aside from change the filter & clean the tank occasionally.
Well the fish I had then was a little larger than my current tenants so food wasn't reall an issue. drop a couple minnows in & watch them get devoured. Catching minnows small enough for these guys, I have 2, is gonna be a bit more a challenge as my minnow trap wont hold fish small enough.
Anyone had experience with these fish & used commercially sold food.? They don't seem terribly interested in fish flakes.
If I find a flake food they will eat, will getting them to eat feeder fish later(after they grow a bit) be a problem?
Some may think I'm sadistic:c11: but I enjoy the way they hit a minnow like an All-Pro Linebacker.

[country_boy454]

Nothing sadistic about that. I love to drop a snail or two here and there into my cichlid tank and watch them follow it while thinking the jaws theme in my head. Then all of a sudden WHAM out of no where they strike!

[Algenco]

give them redworms, I think I would try pellets, when they get hungry they will eat

[Kuli_Loach]

Feeder guppies from your LFS would work. You could also try the panfish worms you get at your local walmart. As said before, I would try sinking foods as well.

[Drumachine09]

Depending on their sizes, you will need a new (much bigger) tank in the near future.

[sharkayak]

It was suggested that I get a bigger tank. Will the 30 gallon tank adverely affect the fish or just keep them from growing to max size?
I fed them some feeder guppies yesterday. How often should I feed them, if they're eating live fish.
They don't seem interested in lifeless food at all. I've got a breeder net on one end of the aquarium to keep feeders in. Should I set up another tank for these?

[Kuli_Loach]

It is best to have 10g and buy a dozen feeder guppies and grow your own. The size of the tank may stunt the growth causing health problems and a shorter life span. Try panfish worms and frozen possible.

[gm72]

It was suggested that I get a bigger tank. Will the 30 gallon tank adverely affect the fish or just keep them from growing to max size?

It will indeed adversely affect the fish. Imagine living your entire life in a closet. Not too cool.

[juanell]

i had a warmouth bass in a goldfish community tank he was about 2" and the gold fish where all 4+" believe it or not, every day or two i would wake up to a missing GF 20 went to 15, but i did not notice, 15 went to 10 and i started to pay attention, then as ones i grew bonds to started to not show up i began to wonder [i netted this guy out of a pond and i did not know what he was] ran to the LFS and they hipped me to it, warmouth he never grew bigger than 3" he was in an 80gal community tank he had room and he most deff had food [?] but he never grew i eventually put him in my Perch pond, where i never spotted him again

[KatzeSlaugen]

he didnt grow because unless you had a huge tank having a tank with 20+ goldfish and a bass would cause very high nitrates, and growth hormone severly stunting anything in the tank.

back to the thread i agree that if he gets hungry he will eat. no animal will starve itself to death when there is something , no matter how untasty or different, to eat

[Brhino]

this thread was started three years ago, so any advice to the OP will most likely go unheeded at this point.

[konk]

I have three Warmouths among 10 fish, all but one Native fish I caught on a rod-and-reel fishing creeks, in a 55-gallon tank. Also have two largemouth bass, one rock bass, and three bluegills. Plus one large Pleicostius (spelling?)(algae eater) who gets along fine with them.

They have been in this tank since mid August, and are thriving. They won't even look at any type of store-bought food -- when I've dropped fish food pellets in, the Warmouths and the bass will grabe them in their mouths and almost immediately spit them out.

What I've found is that they love, No. 1, nightcrawlers, and No. 2, minnows.

Fortunately, I've learned how to catch minnows and get them for free. If I drop in a one or two or three minnows, they are eaten by the fish immediately, and usually the largemouth bass are the first to get them.

Although I"ve been a fisherman all my life -- live to fish, fish to live -- and have had a tropical fish aquarium continuously for more than 40 years, I neer kept Native fish that I caught in my tanks. Always had tropicals. Also, I never had a tank bigger than 30 gallons, and this summer had no tank for the first time in decades because, moving back to my native and beloved Ohio from Florida, we had no room to take along our 30-gallon tank.

In mid-August, though, through craig's list, we found an unbelievable deal on a 55-gallon tank. The reason I caught native fish to put in it was that after buying the tank, we had no money to stock it with tropicals.

Since then, it's been an "eye opener" as I've learned how to take care of the native fish by trial and error and observation.

As far as feeding, I quickly found they just won't touch store-bought food of any type. And what they love most are NIGHTCRAWLERS. They also love maggots and meal worms, which are large maggots, but I only buy them occassionally from bait shops because it would cost too much to constantlybe buying them maggots and/or nihtcrawlers and/or minnows from bait shops.

Until winter came here -- I live in Morgan County, in southeast Ohio, with a home on the banks of the Muskingum River, a huge river, 100 yards wide at its skinniest points and up to 150 yards wide in most places, it's the largest tributary river to the Ohio River in Ohio. We're about 35 miles upstream from the Ohio River at Marietta, Ohio -- Parkersburg, W. Va.

I tell you this becuase, fortunately, people here taught me how to catch minnows, and now I'm able to feed my tank fish for free. There are many dozens of spring-fed, crystal clear, shall creeks that run down from the hills and into the Muskingum River. IN every one of the creeks, all you have to do is find the quiet water about one to two feet deep, and put in a minnow trap with DOG FOOD. Bread and crackers do NOT, I found out, attract the minows. But, I've learned, a minnow trap dropped in the right place with dog food will catch at least three dozen and up to five dozen minnows within five to 10 minutes.

My most effective way of feeding the Warmouths and the other fish in my tank is as follows: I used to put in about a dozen or so minnows, and they'd be eaten within a couple hours. But now, I will wait till the minnows are gone, skip a day feeding the fish, and then drop in anywhere from 30 to 50 or so minnows.

The fish get along with the minnows, swim amongst them, and gradually eat them. You see the fish swimming amongst the minnows, and only picking them off when they're hungry. What's interesting is that, when just a few minnows are put into the tank, the bass and Warmouth, especially, will get them right away. But with several dozen minnows in the tank, they'l just swim aongst them and pick them off occassionally as they feel like eating.

What I"ve notied is that with several dozen minnows in the tank, the fish feed on them mostly at night. Virtually ever morning, when I first get up and turn on the tank lights, there will be noticeably less minnows then I went to sleep and turned the tank lights off, so obviously they're feeding on the minnows mainly in the dark, at night.

Also, with a steady diet of minnows now, I'll occassionally, once every week or two, buy a dozen nightcralwers and drop them in the tank one by one. And what I"ve found is that the fish -- all of them -- go "nuts" when thenightcrawlers are put in, and move like "lightning" going after them, and it's njot unusual for one fish to get a nightcralwer and, while it's dangling fro it's mouth, you see another fish grab the same nightcrawler on the other end and then there's a tug of war.

However, months ago, when I fed them nightcrawlers all the time, before I learned how to catch minnows here, I'd put a dozen nightcralwers in and maybe half would be eaten right away, a couple more would be eaten of the bottom over the next hour or two, and usually one or two nightcrawlers would not be eaten and end up eventually dying and rotting on the bottom.

But, now that their diet is almost 100 percent minnows, when I do drop nightcrawlers in occassionall, again, about once ever one to two weeks, the Warmouth and the bass an the bluegills all go nuts immediately and scoop the nightcralwers up before they've even floated half way down toward the tank botom.

That's what I can tell you about my experience. I also have something else very interesting the I observe about my three Warmouth that I'd like to put out there and see if anyone else sees the same thing with their Warmouths. I'll put that out in the the next post, no time to do it now.

[rich311k]

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