Great Idea Chad, but sadly also a salutary lesson in how poor a match to human life as it's lived in the vernacular, the laws of this world are.
Sadly I'm forced to agree that we do need legal restraint to protect wildlife from halfwits, but its a sorry day when those laws also prohibit dads 'n' lads from keeping native species in the home.

Modern life is rubbish
SBW

I was just discussing this topic at my buddys auto repair shop this morning. Seems that a patron,who mentioned she and her boy friend fish a lot, have an aquarium with a largemouth, catfish, bluegills and crappies.

When they go fishin' they drop different baits into the tank to see what the fish are hungry for. Lastnight they dropped worms,crickets,minnows and shrimp into the aquarium buffet.

The catfish went crazy for the shrimp and ignored everything else on the menu.
So, shrimp it was ... later in the evening when they came home, catfish with hush puppies was their main course!

Had a fingerling smallmouth bass in college. Spent the year watching him/her inhale guppies. Was a good lesson in the way a smallie attacks a baitfish--always head first. Would have been even better with a wee one watching. -D

Man, I had no idea there were so many states where what I consider a rite of childhood is against the law.

In Oklahoma we can stick just about anything we can catch in an aquarium, even game fish. The only catch is gamefish are technically supposed to be caught on a hook and line rather than netted, but I doubt there's a warden in the state of Oklahoma who'd give a damn about an eight-year-old catching a few crappie and bass fry for their native fish tank using a dip net.

In fact, my original inspiration for setting up a tank with my son was an article in an old issue of our state game and fish magazine, a magazine that's published by our wildlife department.

I'm with Ken on this one, it seems a tad counter-intuitive to ban the collection and keeping of native fish species while saying it's perfectly fine to import, sell and keep non-native species that if introduced have the potential to wreak ecological havoc.

I dunno, maybe states should concentrate on that instead of worrying about the apparently insidious threat that children with dip nets pose to our game and fish laws...

i would have loved to have largemouth in a aquarium when i was young i would have fished in most of the time.

An old college roommate of mine had an aquarium full of cichlids and a couple algae eaters. For chuckles he dropped in a "blue lobster" which is a kind of crayfish. Anyhow, the crayfish sysematically hunted down and ate all the fish in the tank. It was sort of surprising to me because I'm used to using live crayfish for bait. I wonder if wild crayfish prey on bass fry?

Good article. I couldn't agree more. I did this when my kids were little. They learned a lot & had fun at the same time. We went through many generations of crawfish, a snail population explosion, a largemouth bass that kept the floor wet & the kids busy feeding him, and many other adventures.

Get a "Jack Dempsey"... I had several aquariums as a kind and raised all manners of tropical fish. Tigers, sharks, and Jack Dempsies are all predatory fish I learned. The Tigers hunted down and consumed the other fish in the tank then turned on each other (even the red-finned shark). The Jack Dempsey ate three goldfish twice his size and attempted to bite my father's finger off one day when he was attempting to scrub the tank (bit him bad enough to draw serious blood and make a serious gash, for a fish, in his finger). We used to drop lives worms in the tank and minnows to watch him hunt.

I also had terrariums and a cactus garden. What a wonderful world we live in, it's a shame Chad is right and most children today show no interest in it and therefore experience very little of it.

for those people in states banning such an aquarium...

why?

How does putting the fish in a tank do any more harm than eating it? or keeping a tropical fish?

Heck even if you were worried about someone running an unsanctioned boot-leg hatchery operation **rolls eyes** why couldn't you just limit the number of fish? or prohibit their sale?

How does the law distinguish between aquariums and other fish storage vessels like a bait tank or live well?

or do the fish and game agents just get to use the 'ol "I know one when I see one" excuse?

Perhaps there's something I'm missing, but this sounds like an exceedingly stupid law.

...I wonder if its on the books here in NY?

In general, fish have a really rotten survivorship curve with maybe 50% of the population dead within 15% of the lifespan (that's why there are so few really big, old fish.) A few local specimens removed to a tank can't possibly impact the fortunes of the population at large.

Good way to get kids involved and take an interest in mother nature... instead of learning it through the TV or a video game, they get to experience it first hand. Get the kids involved because they hold the future of hunting and fishing.

I've kept just about every freshwater fish in an aquarium at one time or another- the only species I didn't have any success with were walleye fry. I especially enjoyed feeding them all their favorite critters. However, when you do this with wild gamefish you should be prepared to let them go after a year or two when they get too big for thr tank. My favorite, Enest T. Bass, would jump out of the water and grab worms that I dangled above the tank!