The Puffer Forum

Soooo. I'm moving into a new apartment in Feb. And after much deliberation with the landlord, she agreed to let me have as many tanks/whatever size I wanted for a larger deposit. (yay!)
I'm getting a 1 bedroom and instead of being a normal human being and sleeping in the bedroom, I'm getting a futon for the living room and turning the bedroom into a "fish room". But I want to have one main tank out in the main part of the apartment (it's a fairly large apartment). So I'm going to set up a planted 55gallon tank. I really want it to look natural, and was hoping to go out and catch all the fish for it myself in local ponds and lakes.
But I can't find any information on local fish other than huge bass and food fish and such. Does anyone know where to find this information (and where to find the laws of what's legal to keep? Do I just need a fishing licenses?)
I live in Northern Illinois by the way.

Thanks.

Well, most of the local fish you'll find here are all cold water fish, that you really won't be able to keep too well in a home tank.

If they interest you, you could find a local killifish group, they generally do collection trips and know the local spots. Killies are pretty small fish though, and don't interest everyone?

FYI, futons are cool but after a couple weeks they don't feel so good anymore LOL

I wouldn't be against putting a chiller on my tank if need be. I'm just really interested in keeping some local fish. (and possibly local aquatic plants too, but I don't know how well that will go.). Killifish are a great idea, I didn't know they were local? I'll definitely look into it though, I'd actually prefer a school of smaller fish than a few big fish.


And I haven't slept in a real bed in well over four years, I usually sleep on couches or futons, I don't think I could even sleep in a bed now, haha.

I read through the IDNR fishing rules and regulations and found nothing about keeping and housing native fish in captivity. There was a paragraph on seining and keeping minnows (must be from the Cyprinidae family) but that covered mostly net sizes. I know in Wisconsin it's not legal to keep any game fish in captivity without a permit. Honestly, I've seen people do it without a permit but I wouldn't want to get caught. I remember a tavern outside of Eagle River had a huge in wall aquarium and they were keeping game fish that they caught from the lake behind the building. WDNR got a bug up their a-- and went after them, big fines in the $1000+ per fish range. Call the Illinois DNR and ask them if it's legal to keep them in captivity before you do it.

http://www.dnr.state.il.us/offices/index.htm

I know this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I just thought it was an interesting thread:

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/sh ... hp?t=80538

http://www.aka.org/chika/

Check those guys out and see if they do any collecting trips. I'm 99% sure they do, obviously in summer.

In Pennsylvania you are supppose to have a permit to catch specimens but I have never heard of anyone getting in trouble for catching and keeping a few natives as long as they had a fishing license when caught and are being counted when considering your daily limit (for example if I caught a brook trout and kept it in a 100g tank I would only be allowed another 4 trout on any given day I go fishing unless I took the trout back to where I caught it and released it or if I ate it or gave it away for consumption). Also here the fish would have to meet the minimum size limits too. Most native species get rather big for keeping at home (maybe a small sunfish but it would be the only fish in a 55g, otherwise you are looking at minnows, darters and killifishes- everything else gets too big). If you do decide to keep natives, remember if you change your mind later you MUST return it to the waters where it was caught (or euthanize it). This is to prevent non-native species and diseases from being transported from one watershed to another. Just remember not to catch and keep anything on you state's or the federal list of endangered or threatened species (in PA they will arrest us for that and fine us for prohibited species).

Even if you do catch a local fish, returning it to the place you caught it isn't a great idea. If it's been in a tank with other fish, it's likely to have picked up (at least as a carrier) assorted other issues that are not normal to its native waters.

And yeah, anything from Illinois is going to be a coldwater aquarium. And the cold-water fish are often the less-showy ones.

I'm not looking for anything big and showy, just some plain little minnows and such.

I was looking on Aquabid though and noticed they had a section of wild caught native fish. I might just go that route, and possibly see if I can get one or two killies or minnows locally myself.

Thanks for the help guys

http://www.nanfa.org/bcccaptivecare.shtml and http://forum.nanfa.org/ would probably have some more info...

As was stated above, keeping game fish (in Wisc.) doesn't work out so well. However, if the rules are similar to here, I have seen folks go through a fisheree (spelling?) to get fish that aren't wild, but are game fish. I know guys that have stocked their own ponds this way so htat folks weren't allowed to come fish them without permission. (If the DNR stocks it it is open to all)

Whether that allows for tanks I don't know but it is something to check into.