Q&A for How to Keep Bass and Other American Gamefish in Your Home Aquarium

When they are young they enjoy having a companion, but as they get older and larger they start to become more independent. But it also varies from fish to fish.

Pet stores do not generally sell gamefish, but they can be ordered online.

Yes, just make sure you have a large enough tank for one. Keep in mind they can be quite aggressive.

Smallmouth bass tend to be more aggressive in a tank than Largemouth. The key is to keep them well fed with live minnows. If they are hungry, they will fight more.

Get a 2-liter soda bottle and tear off the label. Cut the top off and re-attach it in the opposite direction (with the neck pointing inside the body of the bottle). Put bait inside. Tie a string to the bottle so you can retrieve it from the water, and then submerge it and wait.

Ask the fish and game office of your county.

It really depends on the size of the tank. You'd probably need at least a 75 gallon tank.

Trout are not meant to be kept in tanks. Do not keep a trout as a pet.

Smallmouth bass are generally more aggressive and need more space, so a large-mouth bass might be a better option for your size of tank. Regarding the cichlids, you can try it! Lots of people have successfully had these 2 types of fishes together. Keep an eye on their behavior and remove one of them to another tank if they get too aggressive.

If the tank is long and gives the fish a lot of room to swim and eat, then definitely.

You can buy a tank at any major pet store or buy one online.

Check out your state's laws first! Every state has different regulations for keeping fish that you catch in the wild. If it's okay, then go for it!

They should, as long as you set up territorial boundaries, feed them well, and have a big enough tank.

If you don't mind the fish being eaten, then yes. Bass can be aggressive toward smaller fish. If you want to keep other fish in the tank, then it would be wise to keep native fish that are close to the bass's size.

It depends. If he is palm-sized, that should be a fine tank.

You can start out with a 10-gallon tank. Once the fish are 4 inches, you must transfer them to a bigger tank that is at least 75-gallons.

Walleye can grow to be anywhere from 12 to 30 inches, generally in the 12-20 inch range.

It is legal to keep most fish in California, but you can do a more in-depth search online if you need to.

If the blue gill is 3-4 inches, then keep it in about a 10 to 20 gallon tank.

Try adding more oxygen to the tank. If the bass has ich, then you can buy special tablets that dissolve to kill the bacteria. Ich usually is white and the fish is rubbing against things.

Yes, but it will outgrow it in a month or so. I would advise a 75 gallon tank if you want to keep the bass for longer than that.

You can, but I wouldn't use large amounts of river water in your tank because you don't know what's in the water. I used about 1/4 of a gallon of my rock bass's native water when I put him in my tank.

While rare, they could. At my school, we had 2 perch lay eggs and they hatched, but that was in an 800-gallon tank with the top-of-the-line filtration system and thousands of dollars put into mimicking their natural habitat. It also depends on tank size and if you have both a male and a female.

NO. Bluegills are cold water fish, and African cichlids are warm water fish. Bluegills are also very aggressive compared to most hobby fish, so they could hurt or even eat the cichlids.

I have used that conditioner brand more than once with my bass, minnows, perch, etc., and they’ve all been healthy and happy since, so I’d say that it is safe to use.

Feed it worms, crickets, minnows, as these are their natural diet. But you can even wean it on to flakes and pellets if need be.

It depends. It may be a Small Mouth Bass, just because of sheer size and because they can be 12 pounds at maximum weight.

Do not release it because it has been raised in captivity and will catch diseases or be chased and eaten quickly if released in the wild. Also, it has been hand fed, so it hasn’t had to fight for its food and won't know how to cope, even if it did survive.

Most pet stores do not carry most of the gamefish discussed in this article. You can, however, order many of them online. Keep in mind; the order of these fish can be pricey, and you can always get one for free by catching one!

Peacock bass get much larger than cichlids, so no, they could not be kept together because the bass would eat the cichlids.