A weekend trip into the heard of China’s eastern Shandong Province
Wang Jing and I left our hometown Qingdao in the early morning heading north-west towards Weifang. China’s Shandong Province is flat land. There are only few montains and thus few torrent water creeks. After around one and a half hour we finally reached a spot seemed to be OK for fishing.
Fishing villagers at our first spot on this trip. Bread served as bait. They were after big cyprinids, such as carp etc...
In Puji Gongyeyuan we met some locals, which showed us the way to a huge water receptacle. It serves as a reservoir for adjacent civilization.
This is the biotope EW-CN 38-07.
On the shallow, sandy shore there were plenty of Pseudorasbora parva. It was by far the predominating species.
Pelteobagrus fluvidraco is wide spread in China’s fresh waters. It is a food fish and is often seen in restaurants. The flesh is delicious!
This species is very hardy when it comes to aquarium maintenance. It makes a good tank mate for ’grand sized’ cichlids. Too small mates will be devoured.
Sarcocheilichthys nigripinnis was very rare EW-CN 38-07. We could catch just two specimens among thousands (!) of Pseudorasbora.
Sarcocheilichthys nigripinnis features a very interesting spawing behaviour, which is not fully understood yet. During the spawing season there is ovopositor being developed at females. It serves similar to bitterlings (Rhodeus ssp.) as an egglaying device. It is believed that the breathing rift of mussels serves as a egg depot. Sintop there were plentiful Rhodeus ocellatus in EW-CN 38-07 as well as required mussels.
In the rest water puddles there were still some fishes fighting against the draught.
