From: oleg@Veritas.COM (Oleg Kiselev)
Newsgroups: alt.aquaria,rec.aquaria
Subject: Re: [F] killifish
Date: 26 Jan 93 05:32:38 GMT
Reply-To: oleg@veritas.com (Oleg Kiselev)
Organization: Killifish Farm on the Hill

lucas@spot.Colorado.EDU (Michael A. Lucas) writes:
>I have this very old (10 years) book on killifish.  

You can get a few newer books, but the 10 year old book is probably
still a good reference.  What book is it (the author's name will be
enough)?

>1.  Any good mail order places to get the fi or their eggs?

Yes, the monthly Business Newsletter of the American Killifish Association 
carries a few pages of the Fish & Eggs ads from the AKA members.

>2.  Why are they so rare in the pet stores?

Here are some reasons I can think of:  A very large percentage of the
fish you buy in the pet shops are caught in the wild or spawned on the
aqua-farms in Florida, California and most often in Malaysia, Hong Kong
and other Pacific/Asian countries.  A much smaller, almost miniscule
percentage of fish comes from hobbyists.

Killies are not very easy to collect because of the nature of their
habitat.  They live in the shallows, among grass stands, roots and leaf
litter, or in seasonal pools.  The parts of the world where most of the
aquarium-suitable species live are not the places where you'd want to
set up a large scale export operation.  Some are simply remote and
difficult to access.  Some are in political and military turmoil (just
off the top of my head: Somalia, Angola, Malawi, Zair, Liberia, Sudan,
Chile, Peru, Brazil, Columbia and Kurdistan).  Only a few killifish
school in large numbers that make commercial collecting possible, but
even these species tend to inhabit places like shallow seasonal lakes
densely overgrown with reeds.

To "farm" them is also not easy, since they place particular demands on
the breeder.  Unlike danios, rasboras and tetras, killies do not
produce hundreds of eggs in one group spawning, requiring far more work
-- picking eggs out of the spawning mops, incubation of the eggs, etc.
Other killies are "annual" fish and their eggs require months of
incubation.

Most killies' spawns come in small batches which have to be all kept
size-separated to prevent opportunistic cannibalism and the fry *MUST*
be fed live foods. This makes raising non-annual killie spawns more
expensive than raising many other fish.

The annual species are, well, not exactly long lived, so many stores do
not want to sell them to their customers (hell, most of those people
will kill within 3 months any fish they buy in any case, so what's the
big deal?)

The supply of killies is limited, so stores are charged relatively high
prices for them and that price tag is passed on to the consumer,
usually tripled.  I had seen sad looking albino Fundulopanchax gardneri
for $18/pair at a store known for its exceptionally low prices -- how
can an average aquarist be persuaded to shell out that kind of money on
something that does not look very nice at all, when a school of 9-18
neons (depending on the size) can be had for the same price?

Killies are predominantly carnivorous (except for the pupfish, which
are not) and a large number of species do not eat flake food or will
not spawn well if not fed a diet consisting of live, frozen and
"prepared" foods, so they are more expensive to maintain for both the
distributors and the dealers.

Many killies have a deserved reputation for being pugnatious and in
some cases equalling Bettas and Mbuna in their assertions of dominance
over their rivals, sometimes even with fatal results.  Some species'
males will terrorize certain other fish (I had a large male Notho live
peacefully with danios, but nearly killed a group of dwarf gouramis
twice his size, another male Notho murdered my entire spawning group of
lemon tetras).  Stores simply can't afford to devote an individual tank
to each species and a personal little domain for every male.  Many
stores crowd the fish, which works to mellow out cichlids, but only
helps killies rip each others fins off.

A number of killies are excellent jumpers, so they require more careful
handling, which many stores are unwilling to provide.  The feeding
requirements, easily met by better shops, become insurmountable
obstacles in keeping killies looking well enough to be sellable by less
dedicated shops.

Some killies simply aren't all that good looking unless kept in optimal
conditions.  Some killies, like some native American species of
Fundulus and Cyprinodon are not at all pretty, and many are on the list
of endangered species, so they are not available to aquarium trade.

Killies are, for the most part, small fish.  People seem to larger fish
or at least fish that will get big.

Even when a large quantity of spectacular-looking fish are sold to a
shop they may not sell well.  I had seen my fish languish in the tanks
of petshops for months in some cases, because people simply do not
think much of fish that do not do the "fishy things" -- swim back and
forth and look like fish.  Killies often just hang there, looking great
if they are given the conditions they like, or looking drab and dull
under the glaring lights and against the bright-pink gravel.

On the other hand, some killifish that can be group-spawned and raised,
and can be caught in large numbers in West African rain forest streams,
so-called Lampeyes, simply don't look like much of anything unless the
light strikes them just right, and then they light up like living
jewels.  But in a store tank they look like colourless, gray, drab
minnows.  Nobody buys them, so the stores will not stock them.

About a year ago I bought a spectacular group of Aplocheilus panchax at
a local petshop.  They were 2 for $.99, so I caught all fish that
looked like they could be females (all 3 of them) and got enough males
to round the bill up to $5 (when you ask the store employee to catch
"THAT one!  Yes, that!  No, you missed her...  There she is!" in a tank
of 200 scared, identical-looking fish, most will just hand you the net
and tell you to go for it :-).  These fish were just plain, gray
minnows in the dealer's tank.  Within weeks they turned into a
spectacular purplish-red fish with the bright orange&black tail (a few
with the silver and black tail and bluish cast to the body).  I am sure
that the price was this low because the store did not expect to be able
to interest the customers in the fish otherwise.

>3.  Do they ever really get to look as good as they did in these pictures
>    or was that just some freak mutated fish that the snapped a photo of?

Most killies look much better than the photos can show.  Metalic green, blue
and red of the Aphyosemions does not photograph well, the fluorescent glow
of the lampeyes does not get captured on the film at all (much like the
pearl sheen of the pearl danios).  Some people are very good at taking fish 
photos and the slides they make are available from the AKA.

>4.  The book talked about some killifish association or something like that,
>    is it still around?  Address?

AKA's membership contact address is:
	Ronald Coleman,
	903 Merrifield Place,
	Mishiwaka, IN 46544

Annual dues were $19.50 US, $21.50 Canada&Mexico, $32.00 surface and 
$44 air mail for other foreign countries. 

They are going up this year to cover the increase in postal rates over the
last 5 years, but it's still worth every penny.

You can also join KILLIES e-mailing list (killies@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us)
by sending a message to reid@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us.
-- 
Don't blame me, I voted Libertarian.

Oleg Kiselev                                             oleg@veritas.com
VERITAS Software                           ...!{apple|uunet}!veritas!oleg
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