First Fry!

It’s been a few years now since I was actively working with my killies, so I was almost like a kid at Christmas when the first fry appeared magically this morning.

I was surprised this morning when I went down to feed my fish and found a few A. australe (orange) fry in the egg tray.  All I had planned to do was check my mops and hope for a few more eggs, but the surprise is even more interesting because I have only had the young breeding pairs a couple of weeks.   I think they arrived around the 20th of June and while I did find eggs a couple days later … not many, but eggs anyway … I really did not expect them to be viable.

   It’s now July 5th and the first of those eggs hatched … in about 15-16 days!  Normally I would expect A. australe to be 18 days to 3 weeks, so it was a great start to my day.

I have Fp. gardneri Makurdi eggs that are developing and even a couple from Pachy. sakaraymii.  I picked some peat from N. guentheri yesterday and lo and behold …Notho eggs to package up and incubate.  I do have a couple orders of eggs scheduled to arrive this week, so I should be adding to the fry totals shortly.

Now if only I can have a good round of golf later today.

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I’ve had several species of killifish for a few weeks now and it is fun again to spend time in my fish room.

In the past week, I have begun to harvest a few eggs from my A. australe (orange), Pachy. sakaramyi and Fp. gardneri Makurdi.  I haven’t pulled the peat from the N. guentheri or any of the other annuals I have set up, but there looks like there has been some activity.  It’s been a long time since I was excited about my fish breeding.  I have eggs coming from a couple of sources, E. dagti and N. foerschi.  I hope to have both those species up and running shortly.

My white worms are producing just enough so I can harvest a few for my breeders, but I am still searching for a daphnia starter culture.  I used to be able collect daphnia locally, but I will have to find a new source for them to get a starter going in my tubs at home.  I definitely would like to do this.  Fortunately, I have brine shrimp eggs from the past and even though the hatches have not been great, they are enough to feed fry when they come and have enough left over to add to my adult fish’s diet.  Surprisingly, several of my fish are taking dry food better than I remember.

I am going to have to find a small, inexpensive refrigerator and/or a freezer so I can get a few starters of microworms (or banana worms, etc.) and I need to find some vinegar eels.  Once I have all of those in place I will really be ready for the fry I know are coming.  I know I can get most on Aquabid, but, C’mon … those prices are ridiculous.  I live too far from any aquarium clubs to make the trip without a better reason than to ‘maybe’ find some cultures … I guess I will simply need to wait until an auction is within reach.

I still have to take a number of ‘sit-down’ breaks while I work in the fish room, but I am getting a bit better.  It has been a learning process for me – just how much stamina I have, etc.  I had a nuclear stress test this past week and have not heard from my doctor’s office yet, so I am thinking that it showed my situation is good or maybe even improved.  I am playing golf today and Wednesday and starting to push myself a bit more to walk.  I really need to get back to decent health.

Until next week!

As I work on KillieNutz Online, I have come to realize just how much work I have to accomplish to make the website into the best it can be.  I have a hope KillieNutz will become the primary site  for killifish hobbyists around the world to seek out information about the hobby and the latest news on conventions, shows and club meetings.  I do not want to restrict this to one region, but to encompass the entire hobby worldwide.

Is this a huge undertaking – yep!  Fortunately, I have time on my side (well as much time as life offers me).  

Currently I am working in two areas – developing a decent database of all killies and adding a secure membership system.  As for the database, I am generally adding more species pages on a daily basis, but I have not yet begun adding the information about each species to those pages.  That will come in time.  With over a thousand species and populations of killifish, it just takes time.  My goal is to have solid information including the status of each species in the hobby as well as care and maintenance information.  In addition, I intend to include the ‘scientific’ information to the pages.

My long range goals include a News Section which will make announcements of the latest research and descriptions of killies as soon as it becomes available.  In addition to that I want to provide regular announcements of all shows and conventions worldwide that are coming up as well as club meetings and gatherings.  In the long run, I am hoping to obtain permission from most of the clubs (local and international) to provide space to link their hobby-related articles to the KN Library.  In essence this will be a clearing house for users to find information.  I will not copy those articles here, but will provide an abstract for each.

I certainly will accept submissions of all types from anyone who wishes to write.  Perhaps in the future I can offer a quarterly magazine (in PDF form) of what’s happening worldwide in the hobby, but that is a long range concept.

If anyone is interested, I am looking for writers, photographers and assistants in operating the website.  Please feel free to volunteer (I ain’t rich, so I can’t pay anyone).

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Its a little humorous.  I got back into keeping killies with the simple idea of having a few tanks and maybe breeding a few pairs of fish.  I am beginning to think there is something seriously wrong with me (I know lots of other people believe I am nuts).

Happily, I now have a few species in the fish room and am looking for a few more.  I have set up an interesting community tank in my living room,  It contains Aplo. normanni and Epi. annulatus and some floating plants.  It would be cool to see fry down the road growing in this 30-gallon tank.  Downstairs, I am focusing on annuals.

A couple days ago, I decided to bring Killienutz Online up to date and add a few things to bring people by to see what I am doing.  What I didn’t expect was to start building the database of killifish again.  With the multitude of killie species now known to science and the hobby, it is a bit of a daunting task, but in my infinite wisdom (or lack thereof), I began.  I have completed a listing of all the different groups of killies with a list of all the species (known to me) and am in the process of designing the system to access all the data.  Each group is based on a region of the world (Africa, South America, etc.) and then further broken down into groups (genera/subgenera) such as Top-Spawners, Annuals etc.  If a specific group is selected, there is a listing displaying most of the known species.  I am still collecting data on the newer species and will be adding them as I gather the information or it is sent to me.

Photography is a problem.  I would like to have pictures of every species on their individual pages, but my skills are limited and access to most of the species is difficult.  I do take pictures at whatever shows I go to and any species I have in my fishroom, but I simply don’t have a good shot of the majority of killies.  I accept picture donations however.

I have no idea how many species for which I have to create a page, but I have completed a section on Nothos with a page for each species.  No, I have not entered much data for each individual yet, but that is underway.

Over the past few days I have wanted to scream about the status of killies.  The splitters have created so many new genera, subgenera and other groupings, it is very difficult to organize the data because the information out there is so fractured. Strangely I find myself going back to the JAKAs over and over trying to pick up little tidbits.  I do thank goodness for Google, although much of the info I find there is old and out of date.  I am working on it, but it is a time consuming task, particularly because so many of the “papers” are on websites that require substantial costs of one sort or another.  For me this is a hobby, not my life’s work. I receive no income from what I do and I simply can’t afford those costs, so I have to find the information from alternate sources or beg someone to part with a PDF.

Okay, so what is my ultimate goal?  As long as I have been in the hobby, I wanted to provide a solid source of information to killie hobbyists and for whatever it is worth, the scientific community.  My current objective is to list, provide information and photos of every species of killifish.  Will that happen. Probably not, but at least maybe I can fill in some of the holes that exist out there.  I want to help hobbyists understand how to keep and breed their fish.  There are numerous ways to do this and hopefully someday, the library will provide as much of that information as possible.

Right now, I am at an early stage of putting this all together.  Given time and the energy, I will add to KillieNutz ONline on a regular basis.

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