Loaches Online Forum

I heard a little bit about darters from streams in TN and other parts of the Americas. Does anyone know about these fish and would they work with any of the colder water loaches?

Voila!

http://www.nanfa.org/articles/acdarteraquariums.shtml

Martin.

Thank you. Good link.

When I tried a google search, I came up with sites for people that play darts and a type of bird called a Darter.

Ah.....see I knew there was stuff on the NANFA site, so searched on NANFA, Darters.

Martin.

Wow!



Etheostoma caeruleum, rainbow darter.

Close Goby relatives, it seems?

No Mike, they're more allied to Perches.

Martin.

I see what you mean.

Fascinating stuff, several really attractive species. May it be that some of them are suitable for a RT?

They would, no doubt, enjoy a river tank setup, but I wonder about the temps being too high.
I try to make it over to a small springfed local stream in May and watch rainbow darters spawn. They are so determined to protect the nests and females that they will swim right up and "attack" my boots.
They are amazingly attractive fish.

If I can ever find the time and get my butt in gear, I'm going to setup a darter tank. We used to buy some for export when I worked at Dolphin and there were amazing to look at. It's really weird to to see a fish turn its head!

Some of the species are so common here that people use them for bait. They call them crawley bottoms which is probably my favorite fish name ever!

This makes me REALLY envious.

Hmm....the point about the temp is obviously valid. Has to be a Florida species.

There is a nice set of pics here,

http://www.jonahsaquarium.com/picgallery.htm

but no specifics linked.

I used to catch rainbow darters from the creek about 15 years ago, I was little then and didn't know what they were, I always let them go. Now it appears that I'll have to see if i can still find them in the creek.

Thanks for the information.
Tom

Nanfa has a forum complete with a section on darters and another with links to folks who sell them or trade them.

http://forum.nanfa.org/index.php?act=idx

There are some darters that will apparently do OK in warmer water. Some would do well in a river tank set-up, some would prefer less current. I'm not well-versed enough, though, to say which are which and how the various darters would fare with loaches.

The people on the NANFA forum are knowledgable and helpful, much like the people here, and the people who sell the native fish would obviously be able to help identify the ones that might do well in various tank environments. The ones I could collect locally all like far colder water than I can consistently and easily provide, so I just visit them in the local streams and rivers.

If anyone decides to try to collect some locally, please take the time to learn which ones are endangered in your area so you can avoid collecting those, and please take time to learn about their requirements before taking them home. (Yeeeesss, I'm member of NANFA. I realize most people reading posts on this site wouldn't need such a reminder, but just in case somebody less responsible wanders by and sees the pics of the pretty darters...) Also FYI, NANFA's official stand (somewhat oversimplified by me here) on wild collection is that once you've collected it, you shouldn't put it back in the wild, but you can read more about that on the forum and on their website if you're interested. Anyone who announced they were going to release fish back into the wild after taking them home would pretty much get the same reception over there that somebody would get here if they said they were going to keep a couple clown loaches in a 10 gallon aquarium.

Ok, I'll take my NANFA hat back off and put my loach hat back on... Darters are really neat -- hope you can find some that will work for you. One of the reasons I have Schisturas and Mesonoemacheilus, etc. is because they reminded me of the darters I visit in the wild.

Lou

Lou,

thanks a lot for the link: lots of material to look through...

through your link, I found this table. It claims that 72F-76F is the range for several species, including the rainbows. So maybe they are an RT option after all.

here in the netherlands i've searched and asked the past few days but none of de lfs has them

They're very rarely exported to Europe Mark. I think that I only ever saw Rainbow Darters twice in England and they were always very expensive.

Martin.