hi Dodd I'm in the mood to learn some fish things what are your top 5 favorite fish?
SO! Number 1 is OBVIOUSLY Oncorhynchus mykiss... AKA the rainbow trout
These guys are amazing. They are the most farmed fish in the world by weight (not numbers). And they're not a trout! They are a true pacific salmon, like chinooks, cohos, sockeye, etc etc.
These dudes are different than the other pacific salmon though as they can spawn multiple times! That's why they don't undergo quite such extreme transformations during spawning season.
Rainbows are typically landlocked. Steelhead trout (which are Oncorhynchus mykiss mykiss) are the rainbows you see out at sea.
NUMBER 2: Acipenser transmontanus.... WHITE STURGEON!
This photo is a poor image I took of the baby white sturgeon I got to take care of for a year during my fisheries and aquaculture tech program.
White sturgeon are the largest sturgeon species. The largest ever recorded was 20 feet long and roughly 120 years old. The oldest sturgeon I worked with, Tyra, was about 9 feet long and was only 65. They reside along the pacific coast of North America and they are pure muscle. A two year old is about a foot long and the scutes (modified scales) are sharp as hell. You can't wear gloves when you handle them either so your hands get cut up real bad. I loved taking care of them. They're like giant, muscly, slimy dogs.
Females will lay roughly 3 million eggs per spawn and the eggs will hatch after about 6 days. A newly hatched white sturgeon is a few millimeters long. Crazy to think about.
This is my jar of dead babies.
Wish I could remember who took this photo!
Frog fish have specially adapted pectoral fins that they use almost like legs! They're bottom dwellers and "walk" along the sea floor.
I don't know much about them I'm afraid. My brain was almost entirely consumed by rainbow trout and white sturgeon.
These guys look so grumpy! (I like to say my 'fursona' is just a regular ol' frog fish lol)
NUMBER 4: A fish my family had for about 15 years... A bloodred parrot cichlid named Sir Rupert Finklebottom III, Esq. (We learned she was female when she was about 9 years old)
These fish are man made abominations and I do not recommend owning them. They have horrible health issues and they have nasty personalities. We had two of them. Rupert and Regina. Because they're crossbreeds they're essentially infertile. Rupert and Regina both laid thousands of unfertilized eggs when they were roughly 9 years old. They only did this once. They ate all of their eggs within a week.
People say they're good community tank fish. They are not. They're aggressive little assholes. Ours had to live in their own tank and they'd try to bite you if you put your fingers in their tank (it didn't hurt because they can't close their mouths and have no teeth.)
They have malformed swim bladders and are just generally awful fish. But boy do I miss my Rupert and Regina.
NUMBER 5: All manner of eels. For the purposes of this I'm going to say Rock Gunnels.
These slippery little dudes are sharp as hell. When I did a practicum at an oyster farm these dudes kept getting pulled up in the oyster beds and I ran around scooping them up and tossing them back into the sea. They come in a variety of vibrant colours too!
This abomination. It's a lamprey of some sort. And if I gotta look at this thing so does everyone else.
