Virginia Living Museum | Juvenile brook trout video - beginning of collecting season

11 Apr

Juvenile brook trout video – beginning of collecting season

These are juvenile brook trout in a side channel of the Tye River, approximately 200 yards downstream from Crabtree Falls. Native Virginia Brook trout spawn in late Fall, and take two to four months to hatch depending upon water temperature. After hatching, larval trout acquire food from their yolk sacs for a few weeks before becoming true free-swimming fry, like the ones in the video. They typically station themselves in a side current off the main stream flow facing upstream awaiting food to wash by. These young trout voraciously feed on aquatic insect larvae micro-crustaceans, and the occasional fish larvae. The Tye River has an excellent population of wild brook trout and the fry were abundant.

Banded sunfish Enneacanthus obesus can be beautiful aquarium fish

April is the month most native freshwater fishes become active and signals the beginning of our collecting season. This year we have only a few freshwater needs for the live collection: juvenile Lepomis spp., bowfin, a flathead catfish, a blue catfish, banded sunfish and some bluespotted sunfish that were captive bred by Nick Little at the National Aquarium in DC.

1 Comment

Gerald Pottern

I think that sunfish pic is a bluespotted (gloriosus), not a banded (obesus), based on dots (rather than dashes) under and behind the eye, prominent orange in anal fin, and dots on dorsal and anal fin mostly concentrated toward fin base (few spots on outer half of fins). Gorgeous shot!