Keeping British Wild Caught Fish?

[OohFeeshy]

My dad fishes around Portsmouth, and he occasionaly mentions some of the things he's caught. The other day, for instance, he said he's caught pipefish around the shore. Obviously, there's a lot of cool species around. I understand that the main problem is keeping the tank cool- this I could remedy by keeping it in the conservatory which permanently has a window open, it's cold enough so you have to wear a coat to sit out there. I'd use sea water from the area the fish were caught, filtration is the only other problem- wold it be too cold for live rock, for instance? Any input would be helpful

 

[willtang3000]

could keep it in shed or garage but obviously you would have to have a big tank because even mackeral can get big and for filteration you could just have an external maybe or something

 

[OohFeeshy]

could keep it in shed or garage but obviously you would have to have a big tank because even mackeral can get big and for filteration you could just have an external maybe or something

I'd pick the smallest fish species I could find, I'd love to keep mackrel, but they do get preeety big...

 

[Aquascaper]

It is near enough impossible to keep a tank at coldwater marine temperatures without a chiller unit due to the heat generated by the electrical equipment, lights, etc. used in/on the tank. The sea temperatures around the UK varies from 9c in winter to 16c in summer on average and this decreases rapidly at depth. I have sucessfully kept rockpool gobies, etc. collected from local rockpools in my sump tank as these fish are capable of withstanding wildly fluctuating temperatures, SG, etc. due to their naturl habitat.
As for filtration, there is no difference between this biotope and a tropical biotope - live rock is really the only solution otherwise you would have to be doing big, regular water changes to keep the nitrates down, again something which would be impractical, especially as your trying to keep the tank at such a low temperature.

You would have to source live rock from the same region but I would check the water quality before using natural seawater in a tank environment. Just because the fish live in it in the wild doesn't mean they will survive in it if is not constantly being replenished as in nature. Any heavy metal, organic or chemical pollutant will be magnified in an aquarium as it will not be diluted to the same degree.

HTH