Sternhausen - Acipenser stellatus - 20-30 cm

The Sternhausen, Snake Sturgeon or Scherg is a sturgeon from Russia that grows over two meters long. As a bony fish, Acipenser stellatus looks like a primeval animal, but is an agile and great to watch pond dweller. The stellatus is a larger member of the sturgeon family and therefore also needs a large pond or even more likely a lake. Their rusty brown back and dark sides work nicely as a contrast to the white belly and the very distinctive bright, star-shaped bone plates and fusion scales that cover the elongated body lengthwise in rows. The pointed snout with pairs of barbels is typical of all sturgeons, which the fish uses to scour the pond mud for food.

Adult Sternhausen inhabits areas of brackish and seawater in the Black Sea, Sea of Azov and Caspian Sea and tributaries. Rarely, it penetrates as far as the Adriatic Sea. As a migratory fish, the Sternhausen leaves the sea for the spawning season and ascends to river courses for mating and spawning. In the wild, the snake sturgeon is partially threatened. Our Sternhausen come from responsible breeding.

Sturgeons are fish that become sexually mature quite late, about 10-15 years this can take. The Russian shearwater migrates many hundreds of kilometers to its spawning grounds. During the spawning migration, the actually solitary Sternhausen come together in a group. It is relatively unlikelythat Sternhausen will breed in the garden pond.

Like any sturgeon, the Sternhausen is a bottom-oriented predator and feeds on worms and insect larvae as well as snails and other invertebrates such as crustaceans and insects. Fish fry and, depending on size, larger fish are also preyed upon and eaten.
Sturgeons in garden ponds depend on feeding on a fast-sinking special sturgeon food because of their very slow feeding rate. If they eat the surface floating food for other pond fish, they may swallow too much air, so keeping them with greedy fish that need floating food is not ideal. With a little patience, the Sternhausen will become tame and can be hand fed.

The Scherg are very active swimmers that not only move around the pond all day, but also do not hibernate. This is another reason why sturgeons are not good pond mates for koi, for example, because the colorful carp fish can feel disturbed by the lively bony fish during their winter rest.

As an absolute minimum, a Sternhausen pond must have 10 cubic meters of water volume and be at least 15 meters long. A water depth of 1.50 meters is necessary so that the rather cool, oxygen-rich water-loving sturgeon can retreat to the deeper, cooler water layers in summer. If you include ledges of varying heights in the pond, you will see the otherwise bottom-dwelling starling sturgeon more often. Snake sturgeons are solitary animals and can therefore be kept alone in the pond.

Snake sturgeon depend on high oxygen levels and a strong current in the pond. Without an appropriately sized pond filter and an additional source of oxygen through an oxydator for garden ponds, water features or an air pump, it really doesn't work.

In a garden pond for sturgeons, the substrate must also consist of clay or mud on the terraces in the pond. In the soft substrate snake sturgeon dig for food. Sturgeons cannot swim backwards and should therefore not be kept in densely overgrown ponds or in ponds heavily algalized with filamentous algae - here, especially young sturgeons can actually get badly entangled and possibly even die.