[Killietalk] Futher into the morass...

["Koran, David HQ02" <David_Koran at hq02.usace.army.mil>]

Shene's comments about show fish and breedability raises a bone of contention
for me also.  Yes, I am of the "fat wallet crowd" but I cannot remember many
years that the impressions people have of our "show fish" was not true to
form.  Many years I would track the life expectancy of fish purchased at a
Convention auction.  It is not uncommon to lose about half of what you
purchased within the first month.  It was rare if 20% of your purchase made
it to Labor Day and it doesn't much matter if it is Show Fish, N&RSC fish or
Fish Sale fish.  That to me is the most troubling fact (so idiot guy why do
you do it?).

Let me contrast that with my experiences in the last 3 European shows I
attended.  As for the AKA Convention, virtually every show I have left after
the auction and traveled home and gotten my fish out of bags by Monday
afternoon and I relayed my results above.  It is virtually impossible to get
out of the country the night the auction is over plus I have to coordinate
with Fish and Wildlife so there is a water change and a rebagging usually
with a Tuesday departure, getting to the airport, 9 hour plane ride, customs
and then maybe fish out of bags by Wednesday night--not ideal for survival!
On those 3 shows, fish I have purchased have outlasted AKA produced fish by
at least a factor of two or more.  Outside of annual fishes over half survive
a year and almost all have produced something.  That is a pretty damning
statement for the quality of the fish we are producing.

I haven't tried to purchase many of the "bread and butter" fish in recent
years but if Dave's (wusong) observation is typical, all in all this isn't a
very rosy picture of our killifish quality.  Don't get me wrong, the fish
picture in the European shows isn't necessarily always great either.  When I
judged the Notho class at the '04 AKFB show with Marc Ninin of France (let's
say communication was interesting!) we both agreed finding 3 good entries was
tough, maybe only two deserved an award.  There is still a lot of variety of
species, from very common to very rare.  Another observation is there is
seemingly an unwritten rule that you don't exhibit wild caught fish and sort
of by extrapolation you don't exhibit something you didn't breed and raise
yourself.  I haven't a clue how well this is enforced but I wonder if we
followed that principle how many fish we would actually see in our Convention
show?

So do we blame the Post Office because it is too difficult to ship fish
(remember the EU pretty much bans the shipping of live animals!), the fact we
are too big of a country to exchange fish?  Are we too mercenary with our
killie properties?  Do we not work and play well with others?  Do we suck as
breeders?  We stayed in business for 40+ years, are we doomed to a future of
cyber killies and small tan killie wanna-bes on our tanks?  As before you can
think of this as a stink bomb tossed out there or maybe a real call to arms
for us to analyze what we are doing, determine if there is a real problem and
either find a solution or pretend everything is OK and go on in blissful
ignorance?

Hunkered down in DC,

Dave Koran

PS, as I read this post I thought back a little and remembered some problems
this past year which related to also obtaining fish from a few local breeders
I picked up after the DKG show and recall not having much luck with those
fish either; however, it broke down a little to fish that we basically for
sale and ones the breeder was a little reluctant to part with which have more
resilience than the "for sale" fish.  Maybe a concept is "disposable killies"
and not much care goes into them.  If you are going to sell them anyway, give
them away or place up for auction, they don't get the care those do that
become part of your breeding program.  Hence, we don't see prime breeders in
an AKA show, fish are either too young or over the hill and on the geriatric
diet!  Just another thought.

Join the AKA at http://aka.org/modules/tinycontent0/index.php?id=9
Archives are at http://fins.actwin.com/killietalk/
Modify your subscription at http://www.actwin.com/mailman/listinfo.cgi/killietalk