Speaker 1: Pet Life Radio, Let's Talk Pets.
Speaker 2: Welcome to aquarium Mania. I'm your host, doctor royan On,
speaking to you from the University of Florida. I fis
Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory. Thanks for joining us. Most common freshwater
tropical fish are farmed but originated from Asia, South America,
Africa and Australia. But what about the native fishes here
in the US? Join us as Brian Toriano, ethyologist and
owner of VT Darter's, explains why US native fishes truly
are another great option for aquarium hobbyists. We'll be right
back after these messages.
Speaker 3: Take a bite out of your competition. Advertise your business
with an ad in Petlife Radio podcasts and radio shows.
There is no other pet related media that is as
large and reaches more pet parents and pet lovers than
pet Life Radio with over seven million monthly listeners. Pet
Life Radio podcasts are available on all major podcasts platforms,
and our live radio stream goes out to over two
hundred and fifty million subscribers on iHeartRadio, Odyssey, tune In,
and other streaming apps. For more information on how you
can advertise on the number one pet podcast and radio network,
visit Petlife Radio dot com slash advertised today.
Speaker 4: Let's talk pets on Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Aquariumania on pet Life Radio. Thanks for
joining us. My guest today is Brian Torriano, US native
fish expert and owner of BT Darters. Hey Brian, thanks
for joining us. Hi, So, as kind of usual with
a lot of my guests, I'd like to get a
little bit into your early years at getting a little
bit personal. Where and how did you first become interested
in aquatic life.
Speaker 5: Well, when I was growing up, my grandparents had a
small creek running through their yard, and they lived pretty
close to me and my folks, and so I was
able to go to their house a lot, and there
were always snakes and frogs and lots of little fish
in the creek, and anytime we would go there, I
would be playing down in the creek. And that's where
I got a lot of interest in fish and other
native wildlife.
Speaker 2: So tell us, I guess a little bit more about
early years in aquarium keeping. Do you remember what your
very first aquarium tanks were and what you kept?
Speaker 5: Yeah, my mom and I had a thirty gallon aquarium
when I was really young. We just had your standard
goldfish in there. I believe it was, And my mom
tells me a story that one time, when I thought
the fish were hungry, I tried to feed them a
McDonald's hamburger bond by floating it on the surface of
the water. So, yeah, I got started with aquariums at
a very young age.
Speaker 2: Did they like the hamburger?
Speaker 5: I don't remember.
Speaker 2: I forgot this was in Wisconsin, right, yes, correct? Okay, Yeah,
that's funny. And then you learned quickly that hamburgers were
not the right diet. Yes, exactly, that's pretty funny.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I know you have an interest in passion for
kind of both biology and art. Before we talk about
biology and fish, can you tell us a little bit
about your art history.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I used to do a whole lot of drawing. I've
done some carving, some painting a lot more. When I
was younger, I liked to draw and paint things in
the natural world, tigers and fish and random animals and
stuff like that. I did also have an interest in architecture,
so I did some designing with regard to that, and
did even have a stint at the UW Green Bay
Architecture Camp one summer while I was in high school.
Speaker 2: So what made you kind of make the decision to
head down to science root and go more biology versus
art to what we're kind of your sort of driving factors.
Speaker 5: After high school, I sat down with my parents and
we talked about what would be a better course of action,
because at that point it was really a toss up
between architecture or biology. But we came to the realization
that since I spent so much time down at my
grandparents creek over the years and had such a strong
interest in that, that we thought it would be better
for me to pursue biology as a degree, and so
that's what I focused on when I went to college.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's great, and so yeah, I guess anything kind
of that you remember and maybe impacted you in college
and as a follow up after that, is you know
what kind of made you decide to get a masters
in ichthyology or kind of go beyond your bachelor's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, in college, I had a lot of really
good professors. Doctor Timothy Ellinger was my atheology professor, and
I also had a lot of other really good science
teachers there and got to learn about all the different
species of native fishes in Wisconsin. There are about one
hundred and forty seven different native species of fishes in Wisconsin,
and only a handful of those will you ever catch
on a hook and a line. Most of them are,
you know, three inches or under, and they're fish you
don't really see real often. But learning about them just
fueled my interest and finished my bachelor's in biology and
then decided that I wanted to get a master's. And
in the course of getting my masters, the degree ended
up being in biological sciences, but my specialty was a
theology or the study of fishes.
Speaker 2: And I guess I'm just kind of curious, So, you know, obviously,
usually when folks pursue a master's, they kind of have
some sort of idea what they What were you thinking
you might do with the masters or had you thought
about career wise what you were going to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the original plan was to try to get into
the State Department of Natural Resources, hoping to use my
degrees there, but that ended up not working out. So
I did for a few years work at the us
EPA in Chicago, but I had an internship there and
at the end of my internship, I ended up moving
back to Wisconsin and just tried to find a good
fit for my interests and my degrees and ended up
not really finding a good fit. So I decided to
take my interest in native fishes and my knowledge and
start BET darters.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: Great, Yeah, definitely it turned out to be a good decision.
So before we talk a little bit more about BT darters,
let's talk about US native fishes. Sure, why aren't they
really as commonly kept? And maybe tell us some misconceptions
about keeping them that might make people less likely to
have them.
Speaker 5: Yeah? Sure, Well, there are several misconceptions about there with
regard to keeping native fishes in the aquarium. A lot
of people think that you need a chiller to keep
native fishes, and for most native fishes, that is not true. Obviously,
if you want to keep like a small trout or
a salmon or a sculpin, you'd need a chiller, but
most native fishes are more than comfortable at room temperature
aquarium water, which actually becomes a benefit because then you
don't need to run a heater to keep them. Some
other misconceptions are that you can only keep native fishes
with other native fishes, and that is simply not true.
Over the years, I've kept native fishes with a lot
of common tropicals like cory cats or angelfish, non aggressive cichlids,
algae eaters, plattes, mollies, you name it. As long as
you're meeting the requirements of the native fishes, they're pretty
well to be kept with with other tropical fishes. Some
other misconceptions about native fishes that they're all brown and ugly,
which is not true. A lot of the native fishes,
especially like the rainbow darters that I sell, that they
have blues and reds and are really stunning. And one
US native fish that has actually become famous overseas as
the rainbow shiner. They have really bright blues and pinks,
and from what I'm told there are very popular overseas.
And another misconception is that it's too hard to keep
native fishes in aquariums, and that for the most case,
is simply not true. Native fishes can be a lot
hardier than tropical fishes, and can acclimate well to frozen
or prepared foods, and are really quite easy to keep
in the aquarium.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, well, it sounds like a lot of reasons
that maybe people should keep them. Yeah, so as kind
of an I theologist, you know, we'll talk a little
bit of science here. What would you say are kind
of the major big taxonomic groupings of natives, especially obviously
the ones that you would consider for an aquarium, including
and we'll talk more about the ones you sell as well,
but in kind of in general, what would be the
major groupings for aquariums.
Speaker 5: Sure, major groupings would be darters, of course, they're in
the perch family. Other groupings are minnows yprintids as they're called.
Some people keep sunfishes or centrarcids in the aquarium. Catfishes.
We have some species of native catfishes that you can
keep in the aquarium, and there are some other oddball
ones like swamp fish and some live bearers too, like
least killy fishes that you can keep in the aquarium.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you mentioned a few what would be in
your I guess opinion, some of the more popular species.
I think you might have mentioned some of them already,
but are there Maybe reiterate what those were, and then
what maybe a few other ones might be that would
be kept, and then like where they come from, maybe
originally in the US.
Speaker 5: Okay, well for us at BT darters. The most popular
fishes are high colored rainbow darter. They're found east of
the Rocky Mountains in the US and have a pretty
broad distribution, and they're fairly easy to keep in the aquarium.
Some other ones that we sell that are popular are
a few species minnows. They also have a pretty broad
distribution east of the Rocky Mountains, and also little catfishes,
which tend to have smaller range distributions, but our phone
throughout the Eastern US.
Speaker 2: And for the catfishes, when you say little like, are
the ones I'm familiar with tend to be kind of bigger?
Are there some that would sort of stay, you know,
aquarium hobbyist tank size or do they all get pretty big? No?
Speaker 5: No, No, absolutely, especially one of the species we sell,
the tadpole mad tom, that stays six inches or under.
And there are a lot of other mad toms in
the Eastern US, some of which we have access to
sometimes that stay in the three to four inch range. Okay, yeah,
that's great.
Speaker 2: So yeah, obviously had to ask what native species is
your favorite?
Speaker 5: Well, I'd have to say our high color rainbow darter.
And just to clarify, we call them high color because
we have certain ones that we grade out for higher
color intensity and the amount of color on the body.
It's the same speed as a regular rainbow of darter,
it's just we grade them out for higher color appearance.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, Now another question, obviously is going to be
kind of legalities. So what are legal issues or can
anyone keep native fishes legally?
Speaker 5: Well? Across the US, the legalities vary. Here in Wisconsin,
you can keep a native fish as long as you
have proof that you legally obtained it, so we are
permitted by the state Department of Natural Resources as a
licensed vendor. Throughout the US, again, legality varies from state
to state, but we do help people figure that out.
If somebody orders fish from US, we first check with
their state to make sure it's okay to send native
fishes to that state. And the reason we do that
is because your average person just doesn't know where to
find that information or who to contact, and because we've
been doing this for so long and we know where
to look and we know who to talk to if
necessary to find that information out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's definitely really helpful because yeah, you're right, I mean,
most people would have no clue. So that's a great service.
Speaker 5: Actually, oh thanks.
Speaker 2: So the next question, can anyone just go out and
catch their own native fishes or kind of what's what's
your take on that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well not just anybody can. There's some states that
disallow it. So we recommend if you want to get
out and collect some native fishes, find an expert in
your area that knows the laws and knows how to
identify the native fishes, because, yeah, there are thousands of
native fishes throughout the US, and you don't want to
accidentally be taking home something that's a threatened or endangered
species or accidentally take home an invasive species or something.
So definitely find an expert in your area and talk
to them about it.
Speaker 2: Great advice. Well, you know, let's take a short break.
We have a lot more questions and a lot more
information I know you have for us, So we'll take
a break and continue our discussion with Brian Triano, US
native fish expert and owner of bet Garners. After these
messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: Thank you to hear more of your favorite show. Cool.
Speaker 6: Full episodes of all our shows are available on demand.
Go to Pedlife Radio dot com to fat our entire
lineup of Powsome pet podcasts also dig us up and iHeartRadio,
dan iTunes, Let's Talk Pats lived only from pet Life Radio.
Speaker 2: Let's Talk, Let's Done pet.
Speaker 7: Radio, Headline Radio, pet live Radio dot Com.
Speaker 2: We're back and continuing our conversation with my guests Brian Triano,
US native, a fish expert and owner of VT Darters. So, Brian,
we were talking a little bit about legalities and catching
fish a hobbyist, other you know by themselves. Let's talk
about spawning and I think we'll talk more about, you know,
the fact that you spawn some fishes as well for
your business. How hard is it to spawn aative fishes?
Speaker 5: It really depends on the species. We have some that
we spawn that are quite easy. For example, our spot
finch shiners. They have a specific requirement that they are
crevice spawners, but if you can provide to them a
spawning trap with appropriate sized crevices, they're quite easy to spawn.
There are some other species, like our rainbow arders, which
are a little harder to spawn, but it can be done.
You just have to know the specific requirements of the
fish and as long as you meet those, the fish
are generally if they're in breeding condition, are pretty apt
to spawn.
Speaker 2: Okay, and then I guess the follow up to that
would be like in terms of the hatching and the
feeding of the larvae, Like, how is that is that
pretty easy?
Speaker 5: That's about about standard for most of the fish. It's
not as easy as like a molly or a platy
where they pop out live young that are eating crumbled
up flake food. For a lot of the natives, you're
going to start them on infusoria or other small prepared foods.
But if you spawned some of the slightly more difficult
tropical species, you shouldn't have no problems spawning a native species.
Speaker 2: Okay. So I know there is a group the North
American Native Fish Association, I think NANFA. Can you maybe
tell us a little bit about NANFA? And I know
you had been involved with them as well at some point. Yes.
Speaker 5: NANFA is a group of North American native fish hobbyists
that have interest in the native fishes of North America.
Of course, they have membership throughout the US and throughout
the world actually, and they have a quarterly forty page
print magazine that they send out for nine months. I
was actually senior editor of that magazine and for many
years I was an associate editor. They do have a
small presence on Facebook as well, but there are a
lot of people in that group that are knowledgeable about
native fishes and especially legalities throughout the US with regard
to keeping native fishes.
Speaker 2: Okay, good to know. Yeah, so we'll talk more about
husband and requirements later, but I kind of wanted to
get into your business now, so BT Darters you started
talking about it a little bit. What made you decide
to go into business and specifically with native fishes. You
talked a little bit about some work you did before.
But opening your own business, I know, and I can't
even imagine because I don't have one, must have been
really tough.
Speaker 5: It wasn't too tough. Actually, I started in two thousand
and one, again when I just was having trouble finding
a job that satisfied my interests. And yeah, it wasn't
too difficult to start. I was living in Walkershaw, Wisconsin
at the time, had several fish tanks and was out
catching the native fishes, and I decided, well, why don't
I set up a website and see if I can
start selling them. So that's what I did.
Speaker 2: How did that work. I mean you got obviously you
had to get like permits, I think, right, and then
like how did the response to your website go and
all that sort of thing.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, it was actually in two thousand and one,
there was nowhere near as many as the permit requirements
as there are no. That was before the VHS fish
virus hit Wisconsin, and pretty much as long as you
had a fishing license and a seller's permit, you could
sell the native fishes. So that's how I got started.
Speaker 2: Okay, so not too many challenges. Then that's pretty good
to hear. How many different species do you sell? And
or does it kind of vary depending on.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it does vary. On an average day, twenty three
different species of native fish. But there are certain times
throughout the year that I have access to mourn native
species through a supplier in the US South that I have,
so at those times I can have access to thirty
seven or thirty eight different species.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's great and you don't have to go into
crazy detail. But so do I assume you have a
bunch of tanks at your facility and you're kind of
got some breeding tanks or sort of what kind of
your setup, I guess.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, well right now, I don't have a ton
of tanks. I did between twenty twenty two and twenty
twenty three, I did live in Costa Rica for a
short while, okay, and came back and set BT Daughters
back up, and so I've only got a few tanks
and a few fry tanks. But I do aquaponic filtration
on the tanks to keep the water clean and have
been able to spawn three different species since I came
back to the US, my Lowland Shine, my Black Stripe
top Meadows, and my spotfan Shiners, and so I've got
fry tanks with them and currently selling some of my
spotfan shiners also.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, So Costa Rica, you don't have to go.
That's interesting, that's like a long time anything you want
to share or anything kind of interesting or any rationale
for going over there.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, I went to Costa Rica because I was
a little frustrated with the political climate throughout the US.
It seems, I don't know, it's a frustrating topic.
Speaker 2: But oh yeah, no, no problem, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: I decided to move down there, and after eleven months
down there, it was really hard to find work down
there actually, and I just was having so much trouble
I decided to come back. When I came back, I
set bet Darters back up and got it Roland and
things have been really good with regard to it since
i've been back.
Speaker 2: That's good. Well, I'm glad you're back. Thanks. Well, you
mentioned you obviously have some well caught in some that
you're breeding going into faques. We talked a little bit
about this when we're going back and forth earlier. What
does a hobbyist who maybe has a little bit of
information on kind of normal tropical fish in aquaria but
still is really new, what do they need to know
to be successful?
Speaker 5: Well, I provide care sheets with all of the fishes
that I sell. I also for most of the species
have the care information linked on my website online, so
anybody can always contact me with regard to with regard
to questions about the care of the different species, I
do offer some consultation as well. I do offer some
for free and also with the purchase of fishes, but
for long or more involved consols like setting up like
a display system and needing to know all the details
with regard to that, I do check for that sure
there's also a lot of resources online NANFA website, as
you mentioned, they provide information the NANFA Facebook group. There
are a lot of other Facebook groups with regard to
native fishes and those can be good sources of information
as well.
Speaker 2: Okay, and you mentioned that in general you can keep
a lot of natives with some of the common tropicals.
Are they maybe some that you think specifically should not
be kept or some that shouldn't be kept with certain
fish that maybe you know people that have gotten fish
from you didn't ask you ahead of time and so
had issues.
Speaker 5: Well, I try not to offer any species that you
wouldn't want to keep with other fish. I mean there
are some instances like you want to avoid a fish
that is going to be able to eat your other
fishes just based on size difference. But in general I
try to offer species that are good community fishes and
do well with other.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I guess another question is always going to be,
you know, parasites and maybe potential transfer. Are there more
problems with some of the like wildcot natives for example,
versus you know, some of the more common aquernfish with
regard to parasites, or how do you kind of handle that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, wild cott natives can have parasites that are
also common to truckle fishes. But what I do with
all my wildcot fishes, I prophylactically treat them for internal
and external parasites to remove any. So if somebody buys
fishes for me, they're assured that they're getting parasite free
fishes that aren't going to infect the fishes that they
currently have in their aquarium.
Speaker 2: Okay, so maybe kind of going off some of the
questions I asked earlier, would you recommend any specific species
as maybe the easiest native to start with and any
additional info that would be required for that species.
Speaker 5: Sure? Sure, Well on one super easy species to start
with is our common shiners. They are a smallish species
of minnow. They can get up to about seven inches
when they get large, but they're really great community fishes
and can live just fine in a tropical fish aquarium.
They'll eat flake food all day long, and they're really
well suited to anybody's aquarium.
Speaker 2: Can you describe, like, what do they kind of look
like appearance wise?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Sure, well, they look like your typical minnow. They're
flat sided and silvery. Breeding males are bright red. If
you ever have the chance to see a breeding male,
they're really incredible. But your average everyday appearance is a
silvery fish that is sort of minnow shaped and very active,
like to swim around.
Speaker 2: Also, how about the most difficult what would be a
really interesting but difficult fish, maybe for a hobbyist that's
a little bit more advanced.
Speaker 5: Well, probably our fiery black shiners are the most difficult
ones to keep. They come from the American South in
swiftly moving, highly oxygenated waters, and they really do need
to be kept in aquarium with a lot of water movement.
In the past, I've had experience with them that if
you don't keep them with a fair bit of water movement,
they will develop spinal problems and can't perish. So you
really need to meet that specific requirement to have good
success with them.
Speaker 2: Okay, and can you maybe describe them? How do they look?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Well, they're the standard minnow shape too, like the
common shiners, but these guys have red and black on
the tails and sort of a little bit of red
on the fins, and the body is gray to white,
and they develop males will develop little bumps on their
nose called tubercles and they're just they're really beautiful and interesting.
I've got a video of one of my previous fiery
black Shiners that I had up on my YouTube channel.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so speaking of difficult fish and you know,
things like including within that kind of just even transport
in general, where have you sent native fishes and are
there problems with kind of shipping them or you know,
depending on where people are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let me touch on the shipping first. So what
I do to ship is the fishes are put a
few fish in a bag, double bagged with supplemental oxygen,
and then they get put in a styrofoam lined box.
We most often shipped through USPS Priority, which is a
few days service. But with the way in which we
ship them, we have extremely good success. Over the twenty
some years i've been doing this, I've only lost in
total like a couple dozen fish, So we have really
good success with that. And as far as where we've shipped,
we've shipped to as far as Alaska on the West
coast and as far as DC on the East coast.
And again we're based in Wisconsin, so we've got a
broad area we cover and have really good success with
sending the fish.
Speaker 2: Good. Good to know. So you mentioned your YouTube channel.
Do you have any other resources online that will be
helpful for current or future native fish keepers and you
want to maybe talk about those?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Sure, Well, of course we'd have to mention our
website bt darters dot com trying to provide a lot
of information there to help anybody out with any questions
they may have about the native fish. Also, we've got
a community on cofi that's cofi dot com slash bt
darters where currently we have a lot of photos and
info about native fishes, and that's also meant to be
like a discussion forum where people can ask questions and
get their questions answered. Those are some really good resources.
And again we do also have a share it with
videos of our fishes, and uh, that's where we try
to provide a lot of a lot of helpful information.
Are those those resources?
Speaker 2: Okay? Great? Sounds like quite a bit. Yeah, well, unfortunately
we're out of time. I wanted to thank you Brian
very much for your time and expertise and definitely enjoyed
kind of going through some of your online resources. Learned
a lot and obviously learn more talking with you right now,
want to thank our producer, Mark Winner for making the
show possible. So, Brian, do you have any final words
of wisdom about native fishes or anything in particular you
wanna you want to add?
Speaker 5: Sure, well, with regard to native fishes, a little bit
of wisdom would be to keep your fishes clean, well oxygenated,
and well fed. That's the best wisdom I can give you.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks for that, So please be sure to
check out Brian's Peaky Daughter site and his other social
media links, which we'll find on He's a quarem Mania
episode page. If you have any questions, comments, or ideas
for a show, email me at doctor or Roy at
petlife Radio dot com. That's d R R O Y
at Petlife Radio dot com. Until next time, please visit
your local at France stores, feed your tanks clean, and
consider going native.
Speaker 4: Let's Talk Pats every week on demand only on Petlife
Radios dot com