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My first killie!

20031117-AQ-Fundulopanchax%20gardneri%20'Makurdi',%20Barbus%20titteya-My%20first%20killie%20with%20a%20Cherry%20Barb%20pair.jpg

Sorry the pics are so scary.   The tank is algae infested and the light was bad.  Even so, i think you get an idea how gorgeous this fish is!

It's a good thing i only took a limited amount of cash to my second BAS meeting, or things could have gotten ugly. ($8 for the killies, $8 for 9 GIANT Neon Tetras, $7 for a giant Anubias, $4 for two corys...
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You can see that the Barbus titteya (Cherry barbs) are being obnoxious and excessively playful as usual.
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20031117-AQ-Fundulopanchax%20gardneri%20'Makurdi',%20Barbus%20titteya-My%20first%20killie%20with%20a%20Cherry%20Barb%20pair,%20ambullia.jpg


PS Yes, there is a female somewhere, too, but she's homely.  
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Hi D,

What a nice gardneri! He's a classic. Keep in mind that killies will jump so make sure you tape up every small hole or opening on your tank cover -- even if you think its too small for the fish to get out of -- they will! If you keep the gardneri alone in a 10 gallon tank loaded with plants you will soon have many fry. The adults will eat most everything but some frozen or live food is needed. If you want alot of fry to survive feed the tank live baby brine shrimp once everyday and this will help the fry make it as baby killies need to "hunt" food. You can also spawn them in peat or on spawning mops and collect the eggs or medium and store them. If you want to do that let me know and I can describe how. Good luck. Aren't society auctions great! I wonder if there is anyone there I know.

Bobby
 
Thanks Bobby

There were a lot of people there!  The auction was also huge, probably due to the big area auction a few weeks ago.

I wish i hadn't checked this at school.  I'm afraid i'll go home and find my killie on the floor dried up.  The presentation at the meeting was by Tony Terceira on killies, and very informative and interesting.  He talked about making spawning mops and using coconut fiber as a safer alternative to peat. It started to sound like a discussion of CP media. It included similar comments on how much they jump and to be very careful.  But now i read your message and even though i taped up the bigger gaps, i remember thinking "oh, they won't fit between the heater and the tank edge", and am very worried.
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There was also a very beautiful 'orange' (forget the scientific name for that color morph, but apparently everybody in killies knows 'orange') pair there, but i thought i better stick to a single pair for a start.
 
Killies are a huge group of species (and even within species there is huge variation) of fishes adapted to almost every wet habitat around.  Many of the more colorful ones come from small lakes, ponds, and even puddles in Africa, but they are found in every continent except antarctica and Australia (sounds a lot like some CPs, doesn't it?).  They are very tough, some having evolved the ability to persist in areas that remain dry much of the year.  The eggs of those species require a dry spell before they will develop, and can last a long, long time while waiting (sound like certain CPs again, doesn't it?).

They are often gifted jumpers, and in some small bodies of water grow extremely fast.  There are some species that are never collected small because the fastest growing one eats all the rest to grow up as fast as possible.  Most of them are tough, holding their own against other fish and often they can be downright aggressive.  Two males together in the same tank is a bad idea, but groups of 4-6 pairs will often work.

They have never been commercially viable, in part because they don't spawn in huge quantities at once, and in part because they do spawn regularly and collectors have a tradition of trading eggs (since most can be simply mailed anywhere in the world while in stasis) for low prices.

Most need a diet with at least some live foods.  Some of the killies from seasonal puddles can be short lived- a year to 18 months - while others live for several.  They range from 1 to 6" in size.

Many remain quite small, and can be kept in very small containers.  Combined with the fact that they often don't require water as warm as many of the tropicals and you find that killie-keepers have grow rooms filled with dozens of "shoe boxes" - with tight-fitting lids, of course!

The US has killies - pupfish, flagfish, and others, as well.

Killies aren't identified by species, but by location, because due to their habitat they can vary hugely from one pool to the next.  It has actually been documented that that they spread by elephants carrying mud with eggs in it from one pool to the next, but it probably happens much more often from mud on bird's feet!  Adding to the breathtaking diversity is the strange fact that there will often be two independent forms or species living in the same small pool.  If there is a "sunny" and a "shady" side of a pool, there can be two species that look nothing alike living side by side, but keeping to their part of the pool.  This is strange when the traditional evolutionary description of species formation is considered - a species is physically divided and the two populations evolve independently.  Here, there is nothing to prevent interbreeding and the loss of the two independent species.

Weird.

Anyway, those are just some interesting tidbits i picked up.  Hopefully i'm not too inaccurate.
 
Hi D,

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! Tony Terceira. I've known Tony since the 1970's. He is one of the best. I wish I would have known he was speaking as I would have emailed him an intoduction for you and asked him to bring you a few pairs of fish. He is sending me some Callopanchax soon. I bet he had lots of great photos. Tony knows his stuff. He was editor of the AKA journal for years and wrote a wonderful killie book back in the 70's. It is amazing how close killies are to CP's. Its all about soft acid water, peat moss, breeding, diets for hunters, insects as food and wild, weird shapes and colors. I still like peat better than coconut fiber but if you want to breed on a soil type medium and collect the eggs then cocofiber is great. I just like a nice big bowl of peat and then drying and storing. A friend brought me some Nothobranchius symoensi eggs in peat today -- incredible colored fish! 3 month incubation. They were from fish I gave him. Maybe I will have some eggs or fish for you next Spring.
Were the orange killies australe? Gardneri are easier and hardier. I hope no one jumped!

Bobby
 
I'm located in Illinois where do they have meetings like this?
 
Hi,

What part of Illinois? Chicago and the burbs have several aquarium societies -- including one for killies, saltwater and for cichlids. There are clubs in Indiana and Wisconsin. I am not sure about southern Illinois but I bet there are some.

Bobby
 
hey D, nice Killies!

Your algae problem, is that black hair algae running around in there? if so, I feel for you, I once had a horrible infestation wipe out about 200 dollars worth of plants, and for the life of me, I can not figure out why I got it, all my levels were pegged bang on and it shouldn't have been growing at all...

anyhow, I finally stopped it by breaking down the tank, and putting all the plants int a five gallon bucket of RO water, I then in another bucket, I added water and a cap full of bleach and began doing dunks, this damages the plants, but it kills the algae (or at least seriously retards it.) I then put all the plants back in the RO bucket, which by this time had been generously dosed with Amqel and stress coat (probably over kill... but when dealing with bleach...) the fish lived in a huge ice chest for 4 days while I scrubbed every nook and cranny of the filter system, tank, you name it, I scrapped the substrate, boiled the wood and rocks, (actually had to BROIL some of the wood for a few minutes as it was to big to fit in a pot.) any way, when all was said and done, I knew I had a fun time ahead of me, as I had oblitereated my biological filter (i wanted to reduce the chance of the black hair algae getting back into the tank so all new filter media, new gravel, anything the algae could have grown on... was sterilized.)

I set the tank back up minus one filter which I left on the ice chest, and (I was running dual emperor 400's at this time) I pulled a couple of emperor 400 filter pads out of my oscar tank which had no algae problems, and put one in each of the emperors and added a product equivalent to CYCLE, though, I don't remember exactly what it was. As I added the plants back in, I used a soft sponge and RO water to scrub the leafs of the plants that could handle it, like swords and what not, got as much of the residue off as I could, same with the wood and stones, and then added in the plants I couldn't scrub, like the crypts, which were to fragile, if they had leaves with residue, I removed them, threw some plants away, and sadly, some didn't survive the witches brew of chlorine bleach... (Of course, the lace leaf didn't survive the algae, and the bulb rotted while in the pot... that hacked me off, it was a gorgeous thriving plant prior to that.) all said and done, everything looked great for a few weeks, and then the blasted stuff started coming back, checked my levels, everything again, bang on... did a water change... so on, so forth... finally a few months later, I read about Siamese Algae Eaters... wonderful little creatures that should be a required purchase with every live plant. I added about ten of them to the tank, and low and behold, the next morning, there was not a scrap of the black crap in the tank. I am sure it was still growing, but it was gone from sight and controlled... good enough for me. I later added malaysian trumpet snails, which also do a number on algae and leave your plants alone... this setup held up right on through to the day I finally broke that tank down and moved into the infamous 'no aquariums' apartment complex...

I am now finally in a new apartment... but the aquarium is housing my CP's..
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happily... by the end of the year, my old 30 gallon hex (which used to be home to guppies I bread to feed my oscars and arrowana - I know... I am mean... ) will soon be a micro-reef... so.. happy days will soon be here again... and when I get a house, I am planning on building a huge tank into a wall... should be nice... that will be salt, and I will probably do another large one (and limit myself to two) that is planted fresh water.
 
  • #10
Congrats! Killies are awesome little fishes! I used to breed Killies (different Aphyoseimon sp. which is another name for Fundulopanchanx or used to be some years back) but Nepenthes are less manual work so now I only have one 40 gallon "favorite fishes" left.

Sadly killies generally only live 2- 3 years as in the wild many are only alive during the rainy season. But as heavily as they bred-if you have no predatory fishes and keep the parents well fed your population will steadily increase even with no real effort on your part.

Live foods like brine shrimp, glassworms, bloodworms, daphnia, etc are key for getting the parents into prime spawning condition (though they don't really need all that much encouragement to begin with).

If you have your killies in a heavily planted fishtank they will be far more relaxed and much less prone to jumping out at the first chance. Keeping their water extra clean will also help. It has been noted in some literature that certain species may jump from one puddle, rice paddy, flood plain (who's water has gotten too foul) to another small body of water which is hopefully more suitable). They are so calm in a heavily planted tank that a pair of my Aphyoseimon austerale continued their spawning activity in a clump of Glossostigma sp. while I was pruning some of the other plants only a few inches away.

If algae is a problem increasing your water changes (and using more R/O to starve the algae of phosphates) helps a good deal.

Also a couple "True Siamese Algae Eaters" or "True Flying Fox" (NOT the Flying Fox nor the Chinese Algae Eaters) will work wonders as they are tireless scavengers but it's hard to find a shop who can get in the true ones or even know what they are. The difference between the common false Flying Fox and the true Flying Fox is that the lateral stripe from the eye to the tail does not continue through the tail on the false flying fox. This is basically the ONLY differing charachteristic between the two. Their habits are vastly different however, one will scavenge all day (True FF) and one will sit idle until you feed the other fish (False FF). I think it was Aqua Botanic who has an illustrated article on IDing the difference between the two species in their "Library" section of their website (at bottom of opening page left corner).
 
  • #11
Thanks guys.  Yeah, i'm actually the one who posted the little article on the utility of and an identification guide to true SAEs a few months back in this very forum, so you're 'preaching to the choir'.
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 The problem is, my two SAEs are in my 75 gallon community tank, and with their gluttony have grown far too large to risk putting them in this little 10 gallon, where they would quickly uproot everything.

I don't think it's black thread algae, but it is long and thready and green.  The problem is i overdid the fertilizer for a while when i first planted the tank, and have neglected it a lot since then.  I'll see how it does with regular changes, and may add some otos, since they're smaller and less clumsy than SAEs.  At least they'll eat the soft algae growing on the tank walls.

The first LFS (local fish shop) i was referred to here in Cambridge had a tank that was literally COVERED with BBA. It looked like a silky black coating on the entire tank. I don't go back to that LFS anymore. It was just too poorly cared for.

RamPuppy:  I don't think i could ever go to that kind of trouble just to eradicate some BBA, but i admire your thoroughness.  I guess that's why i haven't dared to try to grow lace plant - i don't maintain good enough conditions.  Wow, that would be a cool one, though.

Bobby: Yup, australe.  I thought the oranges looked like the goldfish crackers - they have almost cartoon smiles due to the coloration around their mouth!

Tony was a great speaker, and i rapidly found myself unable to farther escalate my gasps of amazement at his photos, long before he got to the best ones.  Killies may play a long and beautiful role in my future hobby time.
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 That is, assuming this first trial goes well...

DKiM128, i sent you that google search link that listed quite a few Aquarium Societies around Chicago a week ago, did you even check out any of those?  That's how i found BAS.

Now for an update: The killies are still in the tank, fortunately, but i'm not sure they're eating well.  It's hard to tell, because the male spends a lot of time hiding in the ambullia, and when he's not, he chases the female, who acts terrified.  I think that's not supposed to be happening.

I tried feeding them flightless fruitflies and some packaged brine shrimp, and flake, and i've seen the female chew up the flies and then spit them back out, and the shrimp disappear, but i'm not sure who is eating them.  I'll have to set aside time this weekend to just stare at them awhile and see what's going on.
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My neps are going to be jealous...
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  • #12
Yup, I was checking out some societies, but I was hoping someone on this forum might actually be in my region.  Or know of a good society.
 
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