I was out at Lake Arthur in Butler, PA. I went fishing for stripers no luck. I have a cast net permit and caught alewives for bait. Well I was pulling the alewives out of the net when I stumbled on a few Fundulus diaphanus killifish in my net. I was not using them for bait and had no where to keep them to take them home with me today. I was thinking of collecting a few specimens for my native fish tank. I have other killifish but I am interested to know how I would come up with a collection code. I realize I start out with the name Fundulus diaphanus as the scientific name. Do I just come up with a name to ID the location such as something like Fundulus Diaphanus Lake Arthur 2010 or something more specific like Fundulus Diaphanus Lake Arthur 528 2010. 528 being the road closest to where I caught them. Or should I use something like Fundulus Diaphanus Prospect 2010 as that is the nearest town to where I caught them. I want to know what I should do to properly assign a collection code and name. Anyone know if I can breed them and trade their offspring for other fish or sell them? I know you can't sell them if they are caught but if I breed them can I distribute them? I really would like to know how to assign them a collection code along with their scientific name. Thanks.

Assignment of the collection code is essentially up to you, as there are no fixed rules for doing so. I think Lake Arthur 2010 would be fine. I would recommend that you report to Lee Harper details of the collection, with more information about the exact site. Some collectors add their initials in the collection code in order to avoid possible duplication. For example, if several groups collect in, say, Tanzania in 2010 the use of a code like TZ 2010-XX could get confusing.

I don't know anything about the legality of selling offspring from such fish. I suspect it's OK but someone else with more specific knowledge will have to inform you. You could call your local fish and wildlife authorities.

Barry

Would you have Fundulus diaphanus menona? To the west we have F diaphanus diaphanus. I gather that the Eastern subspecies, which looks more attractive in the photos I've seen, may be more abundant. Certainly diaphanus diaphanus was amazingly common in the Mingo River, in the Mississippi bottom lands of Missouri, but their scattered ranges are so small in some states (IL, WI) that they are declared endangered there.

While looking for the correct spelling of diaphanus menona, I happened upon Fishbase, which cited Huber's killi-data in suggesting that their care is difficult. It may be that they need hard water, perhaps east coast ones are used to a bit of sea salt. And they probably do not need "warm" aquarium temperatures.

Stripers are amazingly plastic in their water tolerances. Is Lake Arthur's water rather hard?

If you are in the Atlantic flowage area, this probably isn't an issue, but several years ago a marine virus effecting fish seems to have mutated a tolerance of freshwater in the St Lawrence River, spread through out the Great Lake Region and is supposed to have devastated or at least frequented freshwater populations. In several states it is now illegal to take bait fish (or live fish unless certified clean - as from a commercial facility) from one water to another. They are especially concerned with spreading the virus.

You were collecting your own bait right there, which seems extremely wise just from the standpoint of not spreading more bait fish all over the country and into waters where they may displace other natives. That should have been a rule of behavior, if not law, for a long time!

Check with your state DNR web site and see what the rules are in terms of keeping them. It unfortunately is getting harder to keep North American natives in some places. That also obviously is a factor if you wish to offer them for sale.

A real active Fundulus keeper whose job allows him to travel all over the country, collecting on his own time, will not keep F. diaphanus from places where they are legal and common, because he just doesn't want the risk if a hassle with the Illinois DNR, whose head lawyer has long opposed any keeping of native fish. That guy of course has never seriously considered the wisdom of having some really cool natives in a classroom aquarium so that people might be a little less uninformed about what lives in our water ways and might then be more concerned about water quality and habitat conservation.

William Innes, also of PA, decades ago noted how many leading aquarists of the time started their passion as youngsters chasing minnows in a local creek.

Here, at the basin of the great Columbia river, I have been given several groups of F. diaphanus diaphanus from the local high school Aqua culture class for identification. I have deduced that they need a heavy solution of brackish water to survive(30-40%) and I have never been able to acclimate them to pure fresh water or to reproduce them. Pity really. I love the par marks and the displays from the males!

Having exotics in aquaculture gets very dicey. When I heard about those large Asian carps in southern fish farms sometime in the 1980s, I just wondered when they would get loose. One begins to feel that there will almost inevitably be a release somewhere along the line, if the exotics being raised are comfortable in that climate.

Transplanted killies are less of a problem in the US than are many other transplanted fishes, although check out this video of the banded killifish in Oregon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0MLDEWF9R0

I wonder if those were really aquarium releases or fish moved around in the bait-fish industry. Or are the odds greater that they were released from a ship's ballast tank?

This is why North American fish enthusiasts are so adamant about NEVER releasing fish into the wild environments, even if those fish were originally caught there.

One of the suggested solutions offered by the wildlife people in the video, that pet shops have a buy back policy, is well intended but very unrealistic. I hope that is not a back-door effort to ban the sale of any aquarium fishes.

We do know though that if an exotic shows up somewhere, it is taking a niche previously occupied by a local fish. Just look at the appearance of ballast tank released F. heteroclitus off of Iberia, a threat to the few remaining Aphanius and Valencia in the region that are already imperiled by Gambusia.

Fundulus diaphanus are freshwater killies. Fundulus heteroclitus are brackish water killifish. Both are found in Pennsylvania along the Delaware River, but not in the same water. I have collected and bred both of them. They seem to be seasonal breeders - in the Spring. The heteroclitus need higher temperatures to induce them to breed. They will breed in fresh water if it is near 85 degrees.

The F. diaphanus diaphanus I keep are collected here in the lower columbia river, certainly a brackish-to-pure saltewater environment. Perhaps different than the singular version, F.diaphanus?