Paddlefish keeping

[Moontanman]

I received 12 paddlefish (Polydon spatula) via over night mail four weeks ago. This is an experiment to see if paddlefish are capable of living in an aquarium long term. Conventional wisdom says no, they are supposed to be pelagic and beat themselves to death in a confined space. These fish are endangered in the wild but in the last few years they have been bred in captivity for their eggs (caviar) and meat.

 

So far conventional wisdom has proved to be mostly myth, misconception, and mistaken assumptions. The fish are great and while they do swim all the time much like sharks (paddlefish are distantly related to sharks and chimeras but more closely related to sturgeon) the paddlefish are quite capable to negotiating the aquarium and avoiding the tanks walls as well as any other fish.

 

Paddlefish are an ancient linage, they predate both Coelacanth and telost fishes. They are filter feeders, feeding on animal plankton such as daphnia, cyclops, and insects in the water column. I have found these fish feed well on floating pellets as well. My daphnia cultures only produce and 6 fluid ounces of daphnia a day in the best of the growing season so their ability to feed on floating pellets is important in keeping them in a home aquarium.

 

After watching them feed on floating pellets i feel like this behavior is linked to feeding on insects at the surface during a mass hatch out of insects like mayflies. The paddlefish flip upside down as they gulp pellets from the surface, this behavior was at first only done after lights out which is the time that many of these aquatic insects come to the surface to hatch from larvae to adults.

 

I am enthralled with these fish, they look and swim very much like sharks and their snouts make them look like saw-fish. So far 4 of them have died for various reasons, two of these four were DOA in shipping. these are really great fish and their "ram" feeding behavior is wild as they open their Huge Mouths to scoop up large mouth fulls of water and daphnia. They look amazingly like basking sharks who feed in much the same way. Only a hand full of people have been allowed to keep these fish, the wildest thing about these fish is that they are easily dwarfed, the fish i have are supposed to be hormonal runts and will never get bigger than 12" or so in captivity, if this is true they will be the most interesting fish i have ever kept!

 

A short video of my paddlefish can be seen here.

 

Michael Hissom | Facebook

[modest]

I don't know much of anything about aquarium keeping, but I did see on the discovery channel that Jellyfish were near-impossible to keep because they kept bumping into the walls. The solution, as I recall, was to create a whirlpool-effect in a circular tank. The little fellas didn't have the power to overcome the flow of water and hit the outer walls.

 

But, I would guess a paddlefish is a much stronger swimmer and that wouldn't be much of an obstacle, and also you say they are negotiating the walls well enough.

 

Congrats in keeping them as long as you have. How big are they now?

 

~modest

[Moontanman]

They range in size from about 3.5 inches to 5.5 inches, unless i face some unforeseen problems I expect to keep them long term possibly years if not decades. They are very interesting fishes...

[Moontanman]

WOW I just fed my paddlefish some daphnia and as watched them feed I saw one swoop down and grab a black banded sunfish and swallow it! Evidently our mild mannered paddlefish are not so mild or mannered! The paddlefish was about 5" and the sunfish was about 1", I wonder what an adult paddlefish would do to a school of minnows, or a school of shad? I've noticed what looked like the paddlefish lunge at an otto a few times but he missed so badly I figured it was just a fluke. Evidently the idea they only feed on plankton is some what exaggerated, I wonder what adult paddlefish would do to a school of minnows or shad?

[Moontanman]

U-tube video of my paddlefish...

 

 

YouTube - Fishtank 007.MOV http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DShtnVQDO5E

[modest]

Are they usually that active?

 

~modest

[Moontanman]

Are they usually that active?

 

~modest

 

They are feeding in the video so they are a bit hyper but yes they never stop swimming, always swimming around pretty much like the video...

[Moontanman]

I took a new video over the weekend, the last one was about a month old here is anew one....

 

 

YouTube - Fishtank 019 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r6jX8Zfe10

[modest]

Wow! They are very shark-like :shrug:

 

Is the behavior you've seen where they flip over and eat off the surface common to a big-nosed fish like that? I ask because I've seen my outdoor plecos do that.

 

~modest

[Moontanman]

Wow! They are very shark-like :shrug:

 

Is the behavior you've seen where they flip over and eat off the surface common to a big-nosed fish like that? I ask because I've seen my outdoor plecos do that.

 

~modest

 

To be honest I don't know, these fish are close to being totally unique, I think the flipping over is how they take insects from the surface during an insect hatch event, the nostrum does seem to get in their way from time to time, lol

[Moontanman]

I partially set up my 75 gallon aquarium yesterday, I used 40 pounds of black sand, Tahitian Moon Sand, about 1 inch over the bottom of the tank. I filled the tank with well water run through a regular home water softener. The water, as usual had a very strong odor of HS, I added a quart of regular H2O2 and the odor dissipated. i added one cup of marine aquarium salt and 1/2 cup of calcium chloride to compensate for the extreme softness of the water. I am aerating the water for 24 hours before adding filtration or fish. I'll put up a you tube video of the fish in their new home in a few days... I'll add some sacrificial fish for 24 hours before adding the paddlefish.... So far the sacrificial fish, Gambusia, are doing well, in few hours, if they continue to do well I'll ad the other fish and get this tank going!

[Moontanman]

The hydrogen peroxide overload i put in the tank is still to high for fish, so far all the test fish have died, lots of oxygen bubbles still forming all over everything on the up side i added the decorations today. The upside is the tank is probably disease free....! On the left side a large chunk of water worn coal i picked up off the beach years ago, a piece of conglomerate rock, dark green with white inclusions and a chunk polyester polymer, also weather worn I picked up where I used to work for DuPont "Dacron" the polymer chunk looks like a natural rock but it is white as snow, it shows up starkly against the jet black sand.... These are arranged in a loose cluster with the this slab of conglomerate standing up on it's end.

 

At the other end is a piece of bog-wood that looks like the remains of a tree that was torn up out of the sand. Across the back connecting the two ends is an arch of bog-wood, a long limb. Looks pretty good, i am looking forward to seeing the fish swimming in and around the tank...

[Moontanman]

As I have been saying in my thread about keeping paddlefish I just set up a 75 gallon tank for the paddlefish, last night i put the Jump rock in the tank, this morning he was comatose on the bottom and he died after being put back in his old tank. The water parameters i control are the same or very similar in the 75 as the 30 gallon tank he came from, about 6 hours and he was dead! what could have killed him? The real kicker is that gambusia in the tank are doing fine and show no signs of stress. That jump rock was one of my all time favorite fish, he was a great fish I put $40 worth of black sand in the tank just so he would show off his colors. What could have killed him that wouldn't effect the gambusia? No other fish are in the tank yet, just a couple of gambusia... That jump rock was a tough fish, he had been through some really bad outdoor conditions before i got him inside several months ago... I am heart broken....

 

 

 

[Moontanman]

Ok guys! Big opportunity for anyone who has a desire for paddlefish! The guy i got mine from has some available for shipping. This is a very unusual opportunity, he has several "dinks" left over out of his usual crop of fish and is going to sell them. They have 3 to 5 inch dinks, $30 dollars each I'm not sure what shipping will be but he is willing to ship them second day. They are relatively easy to keep if you have a large aquarium, I love mine. PM me for pertinent info if you want one of these fish.

[Moontanman]

New video of my paddlefish, now one year old, on my you-tube channel. I've had these fish a year now, great fish very relaxing to watch