Several years ago I brought home a small perch I caught while fishing at a local lake. He was in 5 gallon bucket about half full of water. I left it in the garage. A month later I looked in the bucket expecting to find a dead fish. The perch was alive and well. I took an aquarium that had been used for gerbils, cleaned it out and put the perch in it. He did not take to tap water all that well so I went to a local creek and brought home enought water to fill the aquarium.
Once every few weeks I would go to the creek and get water for the perch. We fed him feeder gold fish, bugs we would catch and the occasional piece of meat. He loved the little balls of hamburger he was fed. He would greet visitors by blowing bubble on the surface of the water.
He lived in the aquarium about 3 years. He grew from about 3 to 7 inches long. I returned him to the same lake where I caught him. He swam around in a circle for a few minutes then jetted away.
3 months later the game department killed all the fish in that lake to get rid of non native small mouth bass that were infesting the lake. Made me wish I hadn’t let the perch go.