Re: [Killietalk] Harder fish list? (Was: 1. just for fun - a Beginners' Killifish List)

[Scott Davis <unclescott at prodigy_net>]

Beginners' fish lists are fun, but what about a list of species that are notoriously difficult to breed?

Glad if browsing that list was fun. Allen has a point about brevity. Big lists can be overwhelming, probably more so for the new person.

But different killies may work out well for one person and not so well for others. Allen put Pachy. playfari on the beginner's top 10. But as they mature, I find them to be bloody, nasty bullies, Matricides are certainly possible. So just the very size of an aquarium and the amount of shelter/ hiding places makes a difference.

And because many of us get too many killies at auction, we discover that smaller tanks will accomodate more species. But unless care is even more conscientious, the residents of those smaller domiciles are as not well served by itty, bitty tanks as they would be in larger quarters.

Also, what is "easy" for one person may not be for another. Some of the pioneering killie people in the US have water that is endowed with a modest mineral content. While the hardness of the Great Lakes is greater (maybe 160 PPM) than some water sources in places like NJ or NY, that stuff still works quite well.

But try to spawn a pupfish in that water without adding something like Rift Lake Cichlid sales. :)

A person with a cool basement may wonder what all the fuss is over killies from the plateaus of Gabon.

Large predatory killies, like the Nothobranchius that prey on other Nothos or the killies still left in the genus Cynolebias that hunt the smaller annuals also in their ponds can be quite a test as they inhale feeder fish and need a 20-gallon tank for each individual by itself.

And then someone else will gee shucks, "I can't believe how many big beautiful Fundulus catenatus there are in my pond."

Annuals, because of their natural need to procreate very quickly and their ammonia producing gluttony and rapid growth rate may tend to be more aggressive (in the pond, spawned out females can flee to safety elsewhere in the habitat) than other killies. Those annuals rather naturally demand more of their keepers.

The person who has spacious, shelter-rich , covered aquariums, with modest densities of plant spawning killie populations, great filtration, frequent partial water changes, killies that grew up with each other and a temperature that is optimum for those specific killies may ask, "What problem killies?" :)
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