It’s been a busy field season so far and a lot more work to be completed this season. We're still searching for slender chubs, Erimystax cahni, but have not yet been successful in locating any . We plan to resume searching this fall. We’re not ready to give up on them yet, but things are looking pretty grim. 

Same is true for the undescribed “chucky madtom”. We have made several trips to Little Chucky Creek, but so far have been unable to locate any of this rare madtom. Again, we’re not yet ready to write them off. We’ll be looking more for them this fall as well. We would like to be able to bring both species into the hatchery for captive propagation. With a little luck, maybe we’ll be able to do that this fall! 

Smoky madtoms spawn!

Speaking of madtoms…….we had our first successful spawning of smoky madtoms, Noturus baileyi,  where we were able to raise the resulting eggs to juveniles! About 35 eggs were produced in this spawn and at this time, we have had no losses! We've been working on techniques for handling early madtom clutches for a couple of years. It appears that the methods we’re now employing may be key in rearing some of these difficult species. We have also used it successfully on wild collected nests of yellowfin madtoms, N. flavipinnis, from Citico Creek.

Basically, the technique involves constructing a basket of plastic mesh in which the egg mass is placed. The basket is floated in a hatching aquarium (we’re using 20 gallon “Long” tanks). These tanks, which are normally part of a larger system of aquaria, are taken off-line when used for hatching early eggs. An airstone is placed near the basket to provide circulation around the eggs. We have been using an Acriflavin preparation to help prevent the spread on fungus on the eggs. Because of the relatively large water volume, water quality problems are minimized. We have used a similar technique in the past, except the basket was suspended in a smaller plastic “shoe box”. The inevitable egg losses led to a rapid decline in water quality, even with regular flushing. This led to an escalation of egg losses in the clutch. The larger water volume used in the current set-up seems to alleviate this problem.

After the eggs begin to hatch, the larvae fall through the mesh and into a plastic tray situated on the floor of the tank, immediately beneath the basket. The larvae will stay in the tray until they absorb their yolk-sac and begin to actively swim. At this stage, the larvae move out into the tank and we begin feeding them.

The pair of smoky madtoms that spawned for us this year was collected from Citico Creek several weeks prior to their spawning. This is significant because it underscores the difficulties we've had in the captive conditioning of this species. We still feel strongly that feeding may be a key in spawning many species of madtom. Oddly enough, madtoms seem to vary greatly in their acceptance of various foods in captivity. Some will readily accept a large variety of foods in the aquarium. Others are reluctant to accept more than one or two food items. Our Smoky madtoms will eat live blackworms and frozen bloodworms as adults and little else. Evidently, this doesn’t provide them with some critical element needed to trigger spawning. The few captively propagated fish that have spawned for us produce very pale eggs that are often infertile. Eggs produced by wild females are a rich creamy yellow in color. We have noticed this with other madtoms as well. In several cased these pale eggs were fertile and produced viable offspring, but egg mortality is usually high. We have also noted that those species that are less picky about what they eat are easier to spawn!

On the more positive side, we feel confident that if we can find a pair of “chucky madtoms”, we have an excellent chance of spawning and rearing them. Now, we’ve just got to find’em!

Thanks Alcoa Foundation!

Recently the Alcoa Foundation awarded CFI with a grant in the amount of $4750.00. The money was made possible through Tapoco Division of Alcoa Power Generating Inc. (APGI). We greatly appreciate the folks from the Foundation for taking the time to come by our facility to present us with their check. This money will be used to add to existing culture systems to allow us to increase production of fishes destined for the Tellico River. We hope to be able to stock the first of our fish into the Tellico this fall. The initial stocking will be spotfin chubs, Erimonax monachus, and duskytail darters, Etheostoma percnurum.

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