My Introduction to North American Native Fishkeeping

Striped Blenny (Chasmodes bosquianus)

Part of my obsession with the outdoors includes creating a replica of it indoors.  And my largest obsession with the outdoors is with fish of all kinds.  I love to catch them, watch them, learn about them, and collect them.  So, this is where I bring them indoors, by collecting my fish locally and building aquariums for them that match their environment.  I've had various aquariums throughout my child and adult life, starting with freshwater guppies, tetras, angelfish and modern world cichlids, and during my transition from later high school years and into college, a move to saltwater fishkeeping.

After college, I moved away from saltwater fishkeeping to keeping native freshwater fish and set up my first native stream tank.  Why did I do this?  Simple.  Money.  Or, rather, lack of discretionary money, because just about everything I made at that time went to rent, food, bills, other hobbies and sports.  Native fish were free, and I already had all of the equipment that I needed.

I've never been a "reefer".  No, I'm not talking pot here, although I was never one of those either LOL, I'm speaking of keeping coral reef aquariums.  It's not that I wouldn't keep one, rather, I just haven't gone that route yet.  Maybe someday I will.  In fact, my move away from saltwater (or "Fish Only") aquariums was a financial decision that I had to make as a young adult when my saltwater fish tank had a massive fish kill after a power outage while I was away from home.

For those aquarists out there, how many times have we heard that horror story before?  It seems to happen to everyone.  It happened to me when I could least afford it.  I lost a medium sized blue angelfish, a flame angelfish, a potters angelfish, a heralds angelfish, a bluehead wrasse, a molly miller blenny, a red spotted hawkfish, and a yellow dottyback.  That's a lot of money for someone right out of college with an entry level type job!

So, what did I do?  I took all of the high flow equipment from my saltwater tank and converted the tank to freshwater.  I used stream gravel and rocks to set up a native stream tank.  After cycling the tank, I collected local minnows, dace, shiners, darters, and sculpins and had my high flow stream tank.  I absolutely loved that tank, and, I discovered that our local species are as colorful, and sometimes more colorful, than those that we pay money for at our local fish stores!

After that, I got engaged, then married, moved into a small condo, had a beautiful daughter, and stopped fishkeeping.  I didn't have money or time, for many reasons, mostly too many hobbies, to keep it going.  Instead, I kept salamanders and frogs, and set up a primitive paludarium.  I didn't get back into fishkeeping until recently.

One of my all time dreams was to keep local saltwater or brackish blennies.  A student teacher at my University was studying them, and got me hooked and fascinated with them.  I had kept a local blenny while in college in my fish only tank until another fish killed it.  I caught that fish during a class field trip out on a research vessel in a trawl net and they let me keep it.  That blenny was one of the coolest fish that I ever had in an aquarium.  After that, I had experience keeping various blenny species that I purchased at my local fish stores (like the molly miller mentioned above).

I became hooked on blennies!  I was obsessed with them.  But hey, why spend money at stores on them when I can collect them locally for free?  And, our local ones are just as interesting and as colorful as most of the store bought ones!

Local blennies, like this adult male striped blenny (Chasmodes bosquianus) captured my heart many years ago while in college.  Now, I can observe them in a close replica of their natural habitat right in my home.

So, when I moved to my house and had enough space to really get back into fishkeeping, that was my first goal, to set up a local blenny tank.  Only, I took it a step further.  I set up a Chesapeake Bay Oyster Reef Biotope Aquarium, to not only house my blennies, but to give them a home that feels like home to them.  My goal was to replicate their environment in every way possible, with hopes that they might breed.  I basically wanted a slice of a Bay oyster reef in my home.  I'll go into more detail on those projects soon in future posts.  But, for now, please note that everything that I hoped would happen, happened successfully (knock on wood) over the past couple years.  My blennies and other fish are breeding regularly.

This is a full tank shot of my current Chesapeake Bay Oyster Reef Biotope Aquarium.  This tank is a 20 gallon long.  My final build will be a 100 gallon cubish shaped aquarium.  It's my dream tank!

But, as if one major project wasn't enough, I started another one.  I am working on a local North American Native stream tank inspired by my past stream tank as well as tanks from my friends at the North American Native Fishes Association.  I'll post more on this build later as I make progress, so stay tuned.

This is the current state, almost, of my stream build.  It's a 75 gallon tank that I'll stock with local stream species.  I carved and painted the tank background out of pink polystyrene foam insulation board to look like a local shale cliff formation.  I'm currently working on faux sycamore tree roots as well.

So, that's where I am today with my North American Native Fish aquariums.  I'll document many topics about this journey detailing my builds, so stay tuned.  For now, here's a video of my oyster reef aquarium.  Hope you enjoy it!