Aussie pet bass

[SWFisho]

Hey raiders, I’ve been looking into getting a fish tank set up either saltwater reef style or a solitary fish either a mangrove jack or Australian bass or Barramundi if I can get one in Sydney as a fingerling.  
 

The Aussie bass would have to be number 1 on my list as it would be close to the top of my list for fish to catch! If anyone has one Or any of these fish at home I’d be open to hear how you got started and what common problems you run into with these fish! 
 

tight lines, SWFisho 🤙🏽

[lastworm]

I’ve had bass, Murray cod, yellow belly, sooty grunter, tarpon and others. All relatively easy to keep and very hardy.

Id recommend a Murray cod out of the lot, far more entertaining when feeding. Put a piece of PVC pipe in with it to hide in, drop in live or dead food and watch it scoot out from the pipe and grab the food in the blink of an eye.

Surprisingly Bass are more skittish in a tank.

Edited April 30, 2022 by lastworm

[Pickles]

Hey @SWFisho, I’ve kept quite a few natives- bass, perch, galaxias, gudgeons, shrimp, archer fish and quite a variety of rainbow fish - the rainbows are my favourites 

If they are live caught as opposed to 

In my experience, The bass are very curious and become tame and easy to hand feed, but as they grow, one becomes “top cocky” and will bully and intimidate others, until you only have one big fat bass in the tank or the smaller one cower in the corner and starve.

Edited May 1, 2022 by Pickles

[bessell1955]

I agree with Pickles. Bass are great tank fish and I have only kept one.  I did have some Yabbies in the same tankbut the Bass made short work of them! 

[Smobaby]

Tried the same my turtles demolished the poor bass and yabbies need to seperate all or leave them in the environment. Then hand feed.

[SWFisho]

On 4/30/2022 at 2:43 PM, lastworm said:

I’ve had bass, Murray cod, yellow belly, sooty grunter, tarpon and others. All relatively easy to keep and very hardy.

Id recommend a Murray cod out of the lot, far more entertaining when feeding. Put a piece of PVC pipe in with it to hide in, drop in live or dead food and watch it scoot out from the pipe and grab the food in the blink of an eye.

Surprisingly Bass are more skittish in a tank.

I never thought of getting a cod but I’d happily get one over a bass tbh! Did you have to get an aquarium to order you one?

[SWFisho]

On 5/1/2022 at 7:54 PM, Pickles said:

Hey @SWFisho, I’ve kept quite a few natives- bass, perch, galaxias, gudgeons, shrimp, archer fish and quite a variety of rainbow fish - the rainbows are my favourites 

If they are live caught as opposed to 

In my experience, The bass are very curious and become tame and easy to hand feed, but as they grow, one becomes “top cocky” and will bully and intimidate others, until you only have one big fat bass in the tank or the smaller one cower in the corner and starve.

I’d probably only keep the one fish, I had

a feeling that would be the case with them since they’re so aggressive when you fish for them as well, did you get

your bass from an aquarium or did you just get a micro bass from the river?

[lastworm]

Couldn’t recommend a cod highly enough, so interesting to watch and aggressive when feeding.
It’s luck of the draw with natives I find. Some aquariums have natives often and you just need to check in with them regularly, they may be able to order something in for you. I often changed the fish I had when I stumbled across something new at an aquarium, then did a trade.

Another alternative is finding somewhere that farms fingerlings for stocking into farm dams etc. not sure they’d sell you a single fish but worth asking, they may even just give you one considering they sell them 1,000 at a time.