Native Fish for the Home Aquarium

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It's been estimated that as many as 26 million Americans keep aquarium fish. If that figure is accurate, the hobby is the second most popular in the U.S.-right behind photography. And, as a glance at the yellow pages will show you, the term aquarium hobby is virtually interchangeable with tropical fish hobby.

Why the almost total emphasis on exotic fish? Well, it's certainly not because of any shortage of native ones. Over 700 species of freshwater fish are found in the U.S., andas you'd imagine-more than a few of them are suitable for the home tank. In fact, as a group, they possess several advantages over tropicals:

* Native fish are less expensive than imported or specially bred fish. If you content yourself with a selection of species that can be collected near your home, the cost of the fish themselves can approach zero. (Of course, as with any avocation, you can "get technical" and spend a fortune, as some native-fish hobbyists do, on farflung collecting trips for rare and unusual fish.)

* The costly and energy-consuming electric heaters necessary to insure the survival of most tropicals can be dispensed with. This fact has misled many folks to think of all our northern fish as cold-water creatures. True, there are coldwater fish (the trouts being the most familiar examples), but they're a minority among the North American fauna. The difference between most of our native fish and true tropicals is that natives are able to tolerate cold water. Given their choice, though, many northern varieties would prefer to skip winter altogether and stay in water between 75°F and 85°F. (Because of this, natives can be kept with tropicals in heated tanks, if desired.)

* Keeping native fish promotes an awareness of our own environment. I'd be the last to downplay the allure of the exotic; a tank full of jewellike fish from the jungles of the Amazon is appealing, in part because it presents you with a slice of the unknown. On the other hand, aren't our nearby aquatic environments just as unfamiliar to many of us? And what does the geographic origin of a fish have to do with whether it is beautiful or homely, interesting or comparatively dull?

The fact is, the aquarium industry has played up the mystique of the exotic, and has built it into a sort of snob appeal. The purpose, of course, was to make money, but this kind of publicity has caused several generations of American aquarium hobbyists to virtually overlook our native fish.

A standard joke in the aquarium trade has to do with the slick dealer who peddles minnows from the creek to unsuspecting hobbyists as "new imports from Timbuktu." I have in my possession a 1934 issue of The Aquarium magazine that features a cover story by William T. Innes on the "rainbow minnow" (Notropis lutrensis), officially known as the red shiner, which is native and abundant in most of the central United States. In the article, Innes extolled its "great beauty-a beauty different from that of all known aquarium fish" and went on to confess that, being "not averse to an occasional practical joke," he sent pairs to "two aquarist friends, with the statement that they were a new species of the genus so-and-so, just imported from Africa." But, as Innes later noted when he included another native (the sailfin shiner, Notropis hypselopterus, found in coastal drainages from South Carolina to Alabama) in his classic text Exotic Aquarium Fishes, the serious aquarist's "ardor soon cools when informed that it is a home product."