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| Re: New To The Hobby (Aquariums and Killifish) |
Subject: Re: New To The Hobby (Aquariums and Killifish)
by scottdavis on 2010/3/26 14:52:24
Hey Dan!
The way you are routinely mentioning cycling a tank suggests that you are not quite the rookie aquarist you
indicated. (You probably know that if you move a sponge filter. 1/2 of the water and maybe some plants, maybe some gravel (if gravel is used) from an established aquarium, that your cycle is pretty well imported, especially for fry that do not bulk much.) Your growing number of tanks suggests as case of MTS (Multiple Tank Syndrome) something shared by a lot of serious aquarists and certainly by killie keepers too.;)
Since you are rather starting at the top with the rachovii, you can use whatever incubation time the eggs have left to read things like the section of the AKA Beginner's Guide, which can be found down the column to the left on this
page, under Resources . (In time you might wish to join the AKA, but that seldom happens with the first few killies
one keeps.) Ask away here, a lot of talented members are under-used by newer killie keepers.
Also use the search function here to look for questions, especially if you need them in a hurry. The useful links
under Show and Tell will give you access to a number of other wonderful sites. URLs come and go, so if one doesn't connect, Google the name of that group and see what is offered. Other national killie groups will offer other terrific links too.
One of these links is http://tgenade.freeshell.org/
I think that you will find his on-line book very useful.
Another source of lots of information can be had by searching the archives of the late, oftrn great Killietalk e-mailing list.
Please use
http://fins.actwin.com/killietalk/
to search for questions and answers on live foods, raising Nothos and the like.
You might also search for mention of killifish books and/or live foods books. I'm not suggesting that you buy
them, but copy down or copy, paste & print a list of likely suspects. When convenient, drop by your public library.
You may be surprised in searching the library holdings computer to get responses to killifish, Rivulins or
topminnows or those titles. Some general aquarium books like the Baensch Atlases (Vol 1 and the rest) can be very helpful. When you have checked out what seems useful, ALSO find a reference librarian who works with the Inter-
library Loan program. If your libraries in the Atlanta area are pretty much like ours in the Chicago area, they will
need a little time but will amaze you by what they can find somewhere in their universe. Here that service is still
free - our local tax dollar already at work.
I'm real pleased to hear that you have some fine pet shops and fish shops to buy from. That is less common around the country than it used to be.
You also have a great aquarium society there. I'd check that out too.
ASAP go to their site
http://www.atlantaaquarium.com/links.htm
and look among their links for David's Nature House. That will open up and you want to click on Davids Tropical Fish. That blue gularis is a hint as to one of David's strongest interests.
He is a very experienced aquarist and is much in demand around the country as a presenter on live foods, especially for killies. I think you will find him gracious, incredibly able to talk killies with you and a great resource when it comes to feeding and caring for your fry.
I hope those suggestions are of use for you.
Now as to the age potential of killies, the Nothobranchius are true annuals and at a certain point in time (made
sooner if we don't do pretty nearly weekly partial water changes) it is almost as if a switch was thrown and they may age and die within a week.
However some of the annuals in South American don't seem to have such tight parameters on their futures. Indeed
there are cases where a pond or body of water nearly dried up and after the next rainy season collectors have found young killies and some big older ones that seem to have survived from the previous year. In captivity, as with so many other captive animals, their life spans may be even long.
The genus Austrolebias, from way south in South American, inhabit waters that are down right frigid in winter. Lee
Harper has mentioned that he has seen them spawning under the ice!
Killies and many other fish will age faster if kept in temperatures that are warmer than in their habitats. If we
purposely or accidentally keep them closer to what their species is "used to" they may live longer.
I once received a female Austrolebias nigripinnis (Cynolebias back in the 1980s) from a friend. Space considerations lead to me keeping her in a tank on the basement floor. After I had her, she lived another four years.
I have not been the militant water changer that many of the better killie raisers and show people have been. My fish room is rather cool in the winter too. It may take Rivulus or A. bivittatum Funge, Fundulus or even a Fundulopanchax a couple of years to get big enough to do themselves proud. I don't have a lot of winners in local killie shows, but some of them are 3 or 4 years old. The Aplocheilus lineatus (the golden wonder of the shops is a color sport of that species) certainly will live to at least five years of age if I haven't let them jump out of their tanks.
Glen Collier wrote of an 11-year old Rivulus in his labs. I have a female North American native that I entered in a show in 1997. She is still gobbling up whatever I feed her.:)
This is true of other aquarium fish too sometimes. In the wild the cardinal tetra is considered essentially a one year fish. A friend asked me to adopt her loan cardinal. then 6 years old. She (the cardninal tetra that is) lived another couple of years in our living room community tank.
So what the age of a particular killie is may depend upon their species, who they are kept with (see mating aggression), the size of the tank (larger tanks are more stable chemically, allow for more plants and may dissipate
aggression), the temperatures they are kept at, what they are fed at different times in their lives, how careful we
are in their tank maintenance and whether the tank was covered. Terminal dehydration it too often a cause of
death (though less often with Nothos), especially of fish we have become tired of or of a pair we have promised lots of eggs of to friends.
I hope your rachovii hatch out and thrive in your care. Their odds are pretty good because of your tank space, your
interest, your efforts at seeking help.
All the best!
(I want to apologize for overlapping with recent comments by Brian and Barry, guys much more appropriate as Notho resource people. This was plunked out a couple of hours ago. The phone rang and I've been on for those couple of hours in killie related conversations. By then the response here froze and died in the queue. Fortunately it had been saved as a document and is now pasted back.)
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