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RE: NOTHO-FADE-AWAY
Dear Robert:
I spent six months developing the scrubber culture for white and grindle
worms and have reached a certainlevel of success. I have 9 Scrubber cultures
of white and grindle worms which sometimes produce more worms than I need.
If I do not harvest, the culture will self destruct. I was raised with
waste not want not as a credo. I have raised Killies on primarily these
worms for some time now suplimenting with the frozen blood worms as well as
frozen brine shrimp. Sometimes I feed high grade flakes. As these worms are
about the cheapest bulk food there is I find I hate the idea of going away
from them. Ii have joked that the my idea if aquaculture is converting
oatmeal to income. I have been working on a recipe for culturing fruitflies
fom instant mashed potatoes for about a year now with limited success. I
was down to six flies two weeks ago, but now have hundreds of maggots. I am
now experimenting with acriflavine in my culture medium. Much like my
daphnia cultures, I can keep them going but have generated a very
inconsistant food supply from them. Nothos need to reach sufficient size to
benefit from fruit flies anyway. As I feed mostly baby worms, their parents
tend to remain behind in the scrubbers, I can wean my fish off BBS
relatively early. In any event I will continue to work on flies and
daphnia. Your suggestion regarding feeding is an excellent one! Improving
the general nutritional health of my fish seem at face value to be overall
very desirable. I saw Roasrio LaCorte yesterday and he was kind enough to
share his Moena Daphnia culture with me. If I can get it going this may
help.
With regard to my water quality, I do water changes roughly bi-weekly. I
monitor the PH as an indicator of problems as well as amonia and nitrite.
My water is soft and alkaline. Since I have eliminated peat moss from my
breeding setup in favor of very fine black sand, it tends to remain stable
longer.
I do not cull fish or select breeders in any way. if the fish can get to
the sandbox accompanied by a playmate he or she is welcome to play. I keep
sand trays in with my fish and usually get hundreds of eggs on a biweekly
basis despite the snails etc. My first pair of Gun from which all of my Gun
are decended was the least attractive specimens which I ever saw. Having
killed off the previous attractive pairs I had I saw no reason not to work
with the last pair left alive. Most of my fish are beautiful. but as they
come from a limited genepool I dont have any genes to waste. To make
matters worse I found out that I got them second hand from someone else who
started out with only one pair many many pair years ago. Six months ago I
sold off a batch of 10 week old GUN keeping only one male from that batch as
it had a completely transparent tail. One week later when left alone it
colored up spectacularly. I sold it at auction along with a mate from a
subsequent batch. It now resides in an aquarium with angelfish and from its
current owners description, is one of the most GUN he has ever seen. It
must be nearing one year old now.
My overcrowding situation would be best solved by either, winning the
lottery and adding on a new fish room or by selling off more of my Nothos.
I have stopped selling the fish and am getting a backlog due to the
NOTHO-FADE-AWAY. The last batch of fish that I have sold to a local store
started fading almost from the date that I sold them. I stopped by about
five daus after I sold the fish and the remaining fove pairs would not eat.
Their siblings in my tank are still doing well. If my fish get a reputation
for dying before the store can sell them, my project to mainstream Notho's
locally will also become a thing of the past. My hope is to share the
wonder of these spectacular species with people who have never seen them
other than in books. The popularity of captive raised fish will accomlish
several objectives:
1) Provide breeders like us with economic incentive for our passion.
2) Expand our ranks to others who dont even know that they are killiphiles
yet.
3) Help to reduce the pressure on fish in the "wild".
4) Give fish keepers the oppertunity to have the fish they have only ever
seen in books.
I started with killies about three years ago and I am still learning as I
go. Yesterday I saw my first Pt. Phazianum. I bought the pair at auction.
The female is sick and I am treating her with Melafix. Win, loose or draw
the male is awe inspiring. I felt the same way when I saw my first N.
Rachovii, my first GUN or even my first Gardeneri. Is there anything more
satisfying than sharing this experience with others? And better yet getting
paid for it?
Back to my point at hand. I have also had new Nothos fade when I bought
them from groups which continue to do well. It has been suggested that
Nothos just dont travel well. But as I have been able to inadvertainly
induce fade in my own fish, possible by underfeeding, I realize that this
problem has to be resolved if these fish are to be mainstreamed. Nothos
have what it takes to be THE first mainstream killifish. They breed
abundantly, require little water space,grow quickly, are resplendently
colorful, play well with other fish and can adapt to a large variety of
foods and water conditions. Despite this, we have all seen them stop eating
and fade away.
By the way the fatalities in my devided 10 gallon tank have reached epidenic
proportions loosing about 15 per day. This is now clerarly not fade-away I
assume it is velvet my heater was off about a week ago for a few days. I am
treating with acrifalvine. 2 drops per gallon per day. This is the first
time I am trying this treatment. Does it sound right to you?
Thanks again for your help, If I dont get to feeding my fish tonight my
problems will solve themselves.
Sincerely,
-RJ-
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-killietalk at aka_org [mailto:owner-killietalk at aka_org]On
Behalf Of RuevenM at aol_com
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2000 11:10 PM
To: killietalk at aka_org
Subject: NOTHO-FADE-AWAY
Well, I have no proof about diet and wasting disease, but the two seem
related to me. The number of worms that you feed would worry me. You know,
in
the pre-WW II hobby, breeders approached things a little differently. They
conditioned fish at certain times of the year -- late Spring through early
Fall -- for breeding. The rich diets were not daily things. They were
focused
for a week at a time to prepare fish to breed. Then the fish were returned
to
a more bare-bones diet -- lots of daphnia, let's say. They did not have easy
to use frozen food and getting food was work so they were not apt to
overfeed
rich foods. I have always fed tubifex or blackworms, but I wash them twice
daily in ice cold de-chlorined water and I only feed them after cutting them
into bite size pieces. I feed them to condition breeders for a week to get
the benefit of lots of fertile eggs. I do not feed them as a standard
diet --
and that would include white worms too. Bloodworms are just weird. I am
convinced that some fish cannot handle them for some reason. I think they
cause these problems. Try more fruit flies -- killies love them and they
come
in several types and sizes. The worms are special foods for special purposes
-- like Christmas goodies!
Having raised Killies and Livebearers, I am aware that killie fry do
not
eat like livebearer fry. Livebearers are pigs and process the feed fast.
Killies ( at least many species) will eat alot but do not process it nearly
as fast. Maybe feed your fry a little less and more often -- if possible. We
all over feed -- especially baby brine -- ease off. Try various infusorias
the first week. Green water is always good to raise fry with -- it just
helps
like snails and java moss -- even with big fry. Rosario LaCorte thinks we
feed too much brine shrimp and maybe it is not so good for the fish. Also,
give the fry more space. 150 Notho fry in a section of a 10 gallon tank is
grossly overcrowded. Killie breeders have gotten into the habit of too many
fish into too small of tanks with no filtration because killies will often
tolerate it. Give them space. Maybe 50 1-2 week old fry in a 10 gallon and
further moving/culling by week 3-4. Are you checking water quality in these
crowded tanks? PH crashing? Are you using soft, acid water? Try slightly
hard, slightly alkaline water to raise the fry. They often do better in this
water -- just watch the conductivity. Scheel always recommended keeping
killies in hard, alkaline water and only setting them up in soft, acid water
to breed. Old, pre-WW II breeders, used to prepare water just for breeding,
but we feel we must keep our fish in that water 24/7 today. Sterba warned of
a "water cult" back in the 60's! The great Gene Wolfsheimer, the legendary
LA
breeder and one of the speakers at the first AKA convention, used to breed
many soft, acid water fish in LA's liguid rock. Only with discus, did he
soften and acidify water and then only with zeolite, leaving all the TDS in
place -- and he is credited with the discovery of how discus feed their fry
-- his F 1 fish bred in water they were not suppose to! So look at your
water.
So food, tank size and water might all be issues to consider and play
with. Also, from how many fry are you choosing your breeders? A few? Or do
you raise a 100 and choose the best 3 males and 5 females and breed those?
Do
the eggs get too hot in storage? Do you store too dry or too long? Do you
raise the sexes together or separate them?
I hope this helps!
Robert Ellermann
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