Aquarist Atlas
Aquarist Atlas · the pygmy sunfishes

Pygmy Sunfish

The pygmy sunfishes — the family Elassomatidae, a single genus Elassoma with seven species — are America’s own nano fish: tiny natives of the southeastern United States, most of them under 3.5 cm as adults. For most of the year they are cryptic, mottled-brown fish of dense vegetation, but a breeding male transforms — jet black, barred with electric blue — and dances for his territory. They are not miniature sunfishes: despite the name and a traditional placement near the Centrarchidae, they form a family of their own. Their waters are swamp margins, blackwater creeks, roadside ditches and spring runs from the Carolinas to Texas — and for two Carolina endemics and the federally protected spring pygmy sunfish of Alabama, precious little of that water is left. This section is built to the same standard as the cichlid, cory and pleco pages: researched, cited accounts with no Wikipedia and no invented facts.

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Pygmy sunfish are species-tank fish, and cheap ones — a well-planted 20–40 litre tank, unheated in most homes, suits a colony. Two things define keeping them. First, food: they are micropredators that rarely accept dry food, so a keeper needs a supply of live or frozen fare — daphnia, microworms, baby brine shrimp, blackworms. Second, cover: these are shy, vegetation-dwelling fish that vanish in an open tank; dense planting — Java moss above all — is what makes them visible, because males only hold and display territories when there is structure to hold. They are peaceful but tiny, so almost any tankmate is either a threat or a competitor; shrimp and snails are the safe company. Most species breed readily in a mossy tank — eggs are placed in vegetation, and there is little or no parental care. Lives are short (a year or two), so hobby lines persist only by steady breeding. That matters beyond the hobby: three of the seven species are conservation priorities in the wild — one of them protected under the Endangered Species Act — and captive-bred lines of the commoner species keep pygmy sunfish in the hobby without touching wild populations.

7 species in the atlas

We cover the whole family Elassomatidae — all seven valid species of Elassoma under the Catalog of Fishes, from the wide-ranging banded pygmy sunfish of the Mississippi lowlands to the single-spring-system spring pygmy sunfish of Alabama. Sizes are given as standard length. The one long-synonymised name, E. orlandicum, is folded into E. evergladei rather than listed separately.

Species

7 of 7 species

Wide-ranging · 1

The banded pygmy sunfish (E. zonatum) is the family's traveller — the type species and the only one with a big range, from the Mississippi lowlands as far north as southern Illinois, west into east Texas and east along the Gulf coastal plain, in swamps, oxbows and densely vegetated backwaters.

Florida & Gulf coast · 3

The Florida and eastern Gulf species: the Everglades pygmy sunfish (E. evergladei) — the hobby's staple — the Okefenokee pygmy sunfish (E. okefenokee), and the Gulf Coast pygmy sunfish (E. gilberti), only recognised as its own species in 2009. Fish of peninsular sloughs, swamp margins and tannin-dark ditches.

Carolina endemics · 2

Two narrow-range endemics of the Carolina coastal plain, both described in 1987 and both of conservation concern: the Carolina pygmy sunfish (E. boehlkei) and the bluebarred pygmy sunfish (E. okatie). Each survives in a handful of blackwater ditches and stream margins.

Spring endemics · 1

The spring pygmy sunfish (E. alabamae) is one of the rarest freshwater fishes in the United States — federally listed under the Endangered Species Act and confined to essentially one spring system in the Tennessee River valley of northern Alabama. Twice thought extinct, twice found again.