Field season is upon us here at CFI! We have a ton of work to do this year, but still, we look forward to getting out into the water. Around the hatchery, things are hoppin’ too!

Slackwater darter male, Etheostoma boschungi

Our slackwater darters finished up pretty early, as expected. These guys probably merit an article all their own, but I’ll briefly outline what we saw with them. Based on the available literature, we expected to find them spawning in and on the “vegetation” in the tank. We provided them with artificial spawning mops. We even made an attempt at mimicking a rush plant, reportedly one of their preferred spawning sites. What we found surprised us! Essentially all of the eggs were collected from the substrate, mostly fine sand. No eggs were found attached to any of the mops or other objects in the tanks. We never saw any sign of males guarding nests or nesting sites. Go figure!

Eggs were tiny, and hatching times varied greatly depending on water temperatures. The resulting larvae were also quite small and rested on the bottom of the hatching trays for a few days post hatching. After the yolks had been absorbed, the larvae became a little more active. Their typical fright response was to swim straight to the surface. We don’t know the significance of this, but we did sometimes find larvae in the floating mops in the parents’ tanks.

Artificial rush plants

The young, while not pelagic, spend a fair bit of time swimming up into the water column. They like to rest on objects up off the substrate. The first eggs were discovered on February 25^th, so, at the time of this writing, the oldest young are two months old. The largest of these are approximately 15-18 mm TL right now. What a cool fish!

Our relict darters are spawning now, as are the goldline darters, boulder darters, duskytail darters and a few others. We collected our first Barrens topminnow eggs this week too. We’re working on an automated rotifer feeder for the Percina darters. These guys are very labor intensive, requiring very small foods as often as four times a day. We’re hopeful this automated feeder will help free us up a bit!

We will be releasing smoky and yellowfin madtoms into Abrams Creek next week (April 30^th and May 1^st). We have tagged around 300 of each species using the Visible Implant Elastomer (VIE) tags from Northwest Marine Technologies. Tagging these released fish will allow us to differentiate wild spawned individuals from the propagated ones. Both of these species are doing well in Abrams Creek. By next year, we hope to be stocking these, along with duskytail darters and spotfin chubs into the Tellico River!

Our automated rotifer feeder!

And finally…… CFI is working hard to come up with funding to expand into a new facility! We are exploring several options, but really would like to be able to have a new facility of our own. We have found one building with some potential but are also looking at the possibility of building from the ground up. We currently occupy around 2500 square feet and hope to be able to at least double that. We need it, we’re busting at the seams right now! As might be expected, money has been a big obstacle. We have good support for our ongoing projects, but most of our sources do not support funding for building. Right now, we have a real need to find private support for this expansion. Any help with locating potential sources would certainly be appreciated! We’ll keep you posted.

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