Pike Feeding!!

[NorthJerzyG]

Had some left over crawlers from a trip today, decided to throw em to the wolves. Great view of the feeding................

http://static.photobucket.com/player.../VIDEO0022.mp4

[NorthJerzyG]

Here's another one..........

http://static.photobucket.com/player.../VIDEO0023.mp4

[Jerseydix]

Cool vid.

[Skunk City]

Awesome man!

What do you keep your pH and temperature at?

[NorthJerzyG]

Actually, this is the first fish tank I've ever had. Never checked the ph but the tank is in a cool basement with ambient temps between 60*-65*. Id imagine the water temp is somewhere in that ballpark.

When I first got them, I brought them home in a bucket of river water (mid summer temps). I cleaned and filled the tank with "cool to the touch" tap water. I then used a 3 stage water conditioning kit to remove chlorine and add useful microbes and bacteria. Gave it an hour and tossed em in. So far so good.

I figure, if they can live in passaic river "water", they wouldn't be very sensitive to treated tap water.

[NorthJerzyG]

http://static.photobucket.com/player...IDEO0001-1.mp4

[buzzbaiter]

Pretty sure keeping & selling gamefish as 'pets' is illegal in NJ - mostly because of size limits and unless those pike are 24" you may not want to advertise you have them(careful -the FBI will track you down via your IP address )

Panfish like sunnies, crappies, perch, catfish are all fine though along with any minnows/carp/suckers. Yeah , I know, those aren't the 'cool' fish but rules are rules. My brother used to feed goldfish to his bass during the winter months when getting food(minnows/sunnies) 'naturally' wasn't easy. It was fun for a few years but eventually the novelty wears off and you just end up releasing them which is technically illegal as well(need a permit).

[NorthJerzyG]

Good point, but, they would have ended up as bird or mammal feed otherwise, along with the 10 others I returned to the river from the " mudhole" they were in.

Must have been stocked in high water and hunkered down. Then as it receded, they ended up trapped in a small ditch that gradually got smaller and smaller over the course of a month. Seemed like less pike each time I passed it so I decided to "transplant" them back into the river. Each one spent less than 10 min in a 5 gal bucket of water until they were walked 50-60ft back to the rivers edge. Even threw some rocks to scare away potential predators from the release site.

So I kept 2...... Bedside, I released them right after that video was taken............

[buzzbaiter]

Cool - good save. I just brought it up because my bro and I got 'busted' once by a park ranger. My brother loved his fish tanks and one of the coolest fish to keep are trout. We fished the BFB one day and after fishing , my brother netted around a small spring that feeds it and caught a few 1.5-2" brook trout. He threw them in his bucket(along with some dace and madtoms) and we went back to the car. Well waiting for us was a park ranger who asked to see whats in the bucket. He saw the trout and said we have to release them. My brother argued that he wasn't killing them just keeping them in his tank to raise and then release back in the stream when they got bigger. Ranger said doesn't matter -let 'em go. So now the funny part comes: my brother walks over to the bridge that spans the flat brook, reaches into his bucket and throws the 3 brook trout he had into the river. The ranger upon seeing this, was satisfied, wished us a good day and left. My brother then walked back towards me rather hurriedly and says 'lets get outta here.' I asked why and he showed me the bucket: the trout were still in there - he threw back the dace! Thats my bro - cool under fire and smart