about 4 or 5 months ago I brought home 5 baby bass (florida strain) from the lake and put them in a 75 gallon aquarium. 3 of the 5 died (2 died from the severe beating and starvation from the dominant one preventing them from eating) and 1 had no chance. A Friend of mine brought home 10 and 7 died.
, and here are some observations from the last 4 months . These are just objective observations I've made without bringing prior knowledge into it. conclude from it what you will.
They will not eat any dead prey , period.
They love to suspend vertically in tall grass at night , (head down, tail up) .
They love to hang out on the other side of cover from where their prey is. When they feed the like to push their prey up against the glass.
They love a tube they can swim through much more than anything with leaves or limbs. (A perfect bass habitat would be big black corrugated pipe with holes along the sides they can swim in and out of over a tree).
If they didn't see it on the fall , they won't notice it on the bottom for a while, and won't come to investigate it just sitting on the bottom.
When they eat fish , they will sometimes have 2 or 3 at a time inside their mouth. Also when they eat fish many times they eat it and then spit it back out and seem to only consume it again if its still alive. So if they swallow a fish and spit it back out and its dead , they tend to just leave it alone.
The dominant fish will nip at smaller fish to keep them from feeding (even if they're not actively feeding).
when they're feeding , they're feeding. and when they're not they won't eat anything even if it dances on their head. alot of times they rest motionless on the bottom when they're full.
Crawish will move , then freeze, then move , then pause. especially if they fall from the top of the water to the bottom, when they hit the bottom, they freeze.
When they move without pausing its usually when the bass are actively feeding or just finished actively feeding. They also don't like the daylight and tend to only come out at night. They find one spot inside cover and tend to stay in the same cover spot and not move around.
crawfish are lighter on the bottom than the top , so if you have a 2 color crawfish bait, go lighter color on the bottom.
They match the color of the water around them
They're behavior and physical appearance match the behavior and physical appearance of the bass at my lake as the moon phases and seasons change.
that's all i can think of right now, i wish i had a webcam to just keep on the tank 24 hours a day because its really peaceful to watch them.
