Fundulopanchax gardneri .

[Back in the fold19 5]

I am sorry to hear of the loss of your wife...mine is a soul mate and keeps me going...

Thank you for your kind words . It’s been eight months now and it still stings .

 

[OldFishKeeper]

Thank you for your kind words . It’s been eight months now and it still stings .

I hope we are all here for each other.

 

[Back in the fold19 5]

SURPRISE ! I just got done PM’ing Gary that my gardneri were not cooperating with me and , despondently , I turned to plead with my fish to favor me with eggs and what swims right out in front of me ? One lone gardneri fry about 3/8 of an inch long . It’s never been fed and lives in a bare tank with two huge females and a male . My mind is well , truly and completely blown .

 

[Innesfan61]

It’s never been fed and lives in a bare tank with two huge females and a male . My mind is well , truly and completely blown .

I imagine it dined on gardneri caviar and its newly hatched brothers and sisters.

 

[Back in the fold19 5]

I imagine it dined on gardneri caviar and its newly hatched brothers and sisters.

I didn’t even think of that . No wonder I never find eggs . I have another trio in a ten gallon overgrown with Java Moss and hair algae . I’m going to cast the hairy eyeball on that and see if anything’s there .

 

[Back in the fold19 5]

My pet shop / aquarium strain Fundulopanchax gardneri are favoring me with abundant fry , colorful males and nice plump females . It’s nice when something works like it’s supposed to. In this five gallon I have three males and two females . Two of the males are volunteers that appeared and they grew fast ! Amazingly I pick out two or three fry every week at water change time . Why don’t they get eaten by the adults ? These are the most colorful gardneri I’ve ever seen personally but that doesn’t mean much . I never see anything unusual here along the banks of the Yellowstone . When I got the first breeders last summer they were small and now they’ve grown into monsters . The females are enormous ! They eat like Hogan’s goat too . I love when fish are big eaters and boy do I stuff them !

 

[Back in the fold19 5]

Here’s one of the fat ladies in another aquarium and you can see a volunteer by her tail .

 

[WhistlingBadger60 16]

The only killifish I've ever kept is the native local species, Fundulus zebrinus. You make me want to try some of these. Their colors are just unreal. Alas, Mrs. Badger insists on the one-tank-per-room rule, excluding bathrooms and kitchens, and I'm pretty close to maxed out on the amount of time I can spend on maintenance...so my options are limited. These would be really fun in a classroom tank.

 

[GaryE25 23]

They're good in school tanks. They can be fine down to 18-19 degrees and still get by at 25. Classrooms are crazy environments.

Kids love baby fish, and with the right set up, fry will survive the attentions of their older siblings and grow up. I have long suspected most fry of livebearers and killies get eaten in a very narrow window of time - one or two days early on, right when they start swimming.

Put those gardneri over a dark substrate with a dark backing, and they are a treat for the eyes. They get pale and lose colour with bare glass bottoms and no backing.

 

[GaryE25 23]

I was looking at the killifish egg wars today. On Aquabid, which is a best source nowadays, there has long been a problem that European sellers have been unable to send to US buyers. This has infuriated US aquarists I've spoken with, who blame the Europeans, when the problem is longstanding but previously not ferociously applied US laws. If I were to offer eggs there, I'd have to refuse to sell to the US. Why send eggs to almost certain destruction, or set US buyers up for hefty fines?

I see a lot of AKAers have woken up to the egg distribution problems within their country. They now sell US only, which between notices saying they can't sell eggs to the US from Europeans, and US sellers saying they won't sell to Europe is looking like a political fight, if you don't know the background. It's quite funny.

I wouldn't order from the US, because my past few friendly egg exchanges with AKA acquaintances haven't gotten past the fish censors. There were some US guys caught smuggling endangered species illegal to trade in, and things predictably hit the fan after. They seem to stop packages of legal species going both ways, and you have to do an electronic customs declaration that lets them intercept easily if you don't risk trouble by lying. I guess when it comes to eggs, what agent can tell what will hatch from them? They seem to block as many as they can.

It means, Aquabid is now open for US fishkeepers with the US only sellers, who are offering some very nice fish. People outside the US no longer have to feel sorry for Americans, for killie distribution.

The AKA used to have its own egg and fish listing supported by a code of ethics, but aquabid is free market, take your chances on the ethics (which are sound for 99% of sellers). There's a lot more money to be made with the auctions. Killifish eggs have skyrocketed in price.

I'll bite the bullet for 2 or 3 species I want to gamble on eggs of when nights get to 10c/50f. That's when it starts getting safe for Aphyosemions in the mail. I'll have to order from France, even if some of those American sellers have some really fantastic killies. There's a US guy selling eggs of Aphyosemion elberti. Look it up!

 

[WhistlingBadger60 16]

If I ever get to a place where I only have one office/classroom, that would be really fun. I don't do well with school tanks currently since I have to manage in two different buildings.

 

[Back in the fold19 5]

@WhistlingBadger That Fundulus zebrinus is a native killifish that I have long coveted . There was supposed to be a location not far from me that they’ve been found in but nothing . You , however , may have luck finding them in south central Wyoming . Sure wish you’d go take a look .

 

[WhistlingBadger60 16]

@WhistlingBadger That Fundulus zebrinus is a native killifish that I have long coveted . There was supposed to be a location not far from me that they’ve been found in but nothing . You , however , may have luck finding them in south central Wyoming . Sure wish you’d go take a look .

I think my next major build might have to be a wyoming native tank, and I would definitely include the plains kili. They aren't the easiest to care for. Mostly they need lots and lots of space because they're pretty aggressive with conspecifics. (I'm writing from memory here; I haven't kept them since I was in high school). I'd like to keep a group of them in a 55 g and watch them interact.

 

[Back in the fold19 5]

I think my next major build might have to be a wyoming native tank, and I would definitely include the plains kili. They aren't the easiest to careuthor for. Mostly they need lots and lots of space because they're pretty aggressive with conspecifics. (I'm writing from memory here; I haven't kept them since I was in high school). I'd like to keep a group of them in a 55 g and watch them interact.

That would be great ! There are some nice North American native fish around and I think we short ourselves by not looking right in our own backyards . Best of all the fish are free and we get an up close look at the habitat with our own eyes to set things up right . There’s an article on the Wisconsin Area Killifish Organization ( WAKO ) website that talks about breeding Fundulus zebrinus and the author claims it was all too easy and done in a twenty gallon high aquarium .
Oh , and during water changes today I scooped up four more gardneri . This is so easy I’m almost embarrassed to be not picking eggs . I’m building quite the little colony of these fish . Their numbers will soon rival my Aplocheilus lineatus . One thing isn’t so good though , I’m getting more males than females .

 

[GaryE25 23]

Often, when you have them breed 'naturally' without removing eggs, you can get more males. They know long before we do, and I think there's aggression. But as long as you get some females, stores don't usually want pairs of them if they can get males.

Fundulus would be great to try, but the problem I've found with North American temperate fish is you remove them from the wild and breed them, and then what? They often need winter as part of their life cycle, and we can't usually offer that in an aquarium. They can be a consumer hobby, but maintenance tends to be out.

I bred Montreal area Fundulus diaphanous, and I hit that wall quickly. I have a nice morph of diaphanous in a river close to here. I've spotted it while kayaking, and it is nice looking, for a generally dull looking species. I can also catch F heteroclitus very easily all around me, but houses are just too warm for them. I am tempted, but no.

I had the same problem with darters and some native minnows.