Wild Nut Posted November 15, 2012 Report Share Posted November 15, 2012 All my killifish are now in their permanent set-up (bar me adding in some substrate). I just got a whole delivery of plants from Dave at Aquagreen yesterday, and my usually shy poliaki male has just been out chasing his female around all morning as have the males of my other two pairs. Have duckweed, hydrilla, watersprite, java fern, java moss and anubias in there to help keep the water pristine as well as a pre-cycled sponge filter, and a pothos growing emerged out the back of the tank to help with nitrates. Going to set up two new killifish tanks this weekend. One will be divided and hold australe gold and australe chocolate. The other will be reserved for a striatum pair and whatever else takes my fancy. Ijebu Ode in the left, poliaki in the middle and gardneri gold on the right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
melbournebetta Posted November 16, 2012 Report Share Posted November 16, 2012 Ash, they're beautiful! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wild Nut Posted November 16, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 16, 2012 I know. I love watching them swimming about doing super secret killifish stuff. I'm watching my gardneri pair right now swimming side-by-side through the moss. I noticed there were some poliaki down at Subscape the other day when I was there. Had to resist urge to buy another pair*. I will never understand how killies are not more popular at fish stores. They are brightly coloured, very friendly, relatively easy to feed and mine have all been quite peaceful compared to something like my bettas. *May come down after my birthday when I will be rich(er) and buy a pair Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KillieOrCory Posted November 16, 2012 Report Share Posted November 16, 2012 That looks great! Love it. Still waiting to see a photo of your poliaki male I will never understand how killies are not more popular at fish stores. I honestly think, killifish need to be displayed in a different way to other fish. Once I was at a LFS and by chance there were people there who had heard me give a talk on killifish at the local aquarium society the week before. When they saw me they said "Pity there are no killifish in this store". I then grabbed them by the arm and took them around to 3 separate tanks that had different killies in them. The problem was they were in with schools of tetras and corys etc and were not too visible, unless you knew what you were looking at they are easy to miss. At the end of the day the 'customer' looks into the tank for a few seconds before moving onto the next tank in line. Though even in such an environment, when you do know what to look at they are impossible to miss. Though the realities of the retail environment is different to our home tanks. At the LFS the space is a premium, so keeping the killies with the tetras is not a bad option, it just makes the fish not so visible to the novice. This is pretty much why I had suggested Adrian to keep the killie pairs in his largish betta cubes for display. If LFS sold killies that way they would fly out the door IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wild Nut Posted November 16, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 16, 2012 I definitely agree with that sentiment. He said he had a couple of people asking about my Ijebu pair when they were being held there for pick-up. Subscape had them in a nice tank where you could see them clearly, but it was tucked away right at the back of the store and it was only that I saw darker water in the apisto tanks (always veer towards tannin stained tanks in aquariums!) that I found them. I wish killifish outside of the generic aquarium strain gardneri, were more popular with retailers and customers so then there might be more demand for more species. I have so far fallen in love with A. ogoense, Fp.spoorenbergi and A.primigenium. I see them up on AB and on youtube and I want to cry I tried so hard to get one of the poliaki male for you today! He was sitting on the ground behind some moss with all his fins spread and in full colour. Just as I got my camera ready he freaked out and swam off. I can see him zipping around now so I definitely try again for you. At the moment he is far too busy trying to sexually harass his female to sit still for a photo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forever_and_a_day Posted November 16, 2012 Report Share Posted November 16, 2012 i always love your set ups, they make the fish look happy and gorgeous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wild Nut Posted November 16, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 16, 2012 Thanks. I am more a fish person than I am a plant person, and so my tanks are always designed to be comfortable for the fish rather than artistically scaped. Long as my fish are happy, I am happy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davo Posted November 17, 2012 Report Share Posted November 17, 2012 it's really not getting the fish in australia is the problem, the biggest problem is sourcing it which has 100 pairs available so it makes it worthwhile for the importers to bring them in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wild Nut Posted November 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 I think I may just need to go live overseas America always seems to have nice fish available at good prices. There don't even really seem to be any breeders or sellers from Thailand or Indonesia on AB to try and import in individual pairs of allowed species through someone. Every breeder I see on AB is either from America or Europe which is very aggravating. Anyway Serkan I have a photo of my male poliaki for you. Best I could do as he was hiding on the bottom under his moss. Here is his female also who actually has some nice colouring through her. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KillieOrCory Posted November 19, 2012 Report Share Posted November 19, 2012 :bighug:/> Thanks!He might be similar to mine but not sure. David is certain that he has two different populations of poliaki, that's why I was interested in seeing yours. There is a good chance we have different populations getting imported from time to time. I'll try to get a good side on shot of mine as well. There don't even really seem to be any breeders or sellers from Thailand or Indonesia on AB to try and import in individual pairs of allowed species through someone. Every breeder I see on AB is either from America or Europe which is very aggravating. There is actually a great killifish breeder in Malaysia. If only we could get fish from him. Sam's Killifish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wild Nut Posted November 19, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 19, 2012 No worries Serkan. Finally got the little stinker to sit still long enough to get a photo of. Love the look of the Australe gold 'spotless' on that site you linked to. Going to try and order a pair of australe chocolate from AI if I can, as well as the lagos they have available on there currently. Just got to kick the goldfish downstairs and then my whole bottom row can be dedicated to killies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wild Nut Posted November 20, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 20, 2012 Decided this is just going to become my 'dump all killifish photos here' thread. Was trying to get some of my gardneri gold pair flirting but they didn't like me and my camera. Then when I did get a couple of shots of the female the camera battery died. So here are some more of my Ijebu Ode as they don't care how many times I blind them with the flash. Unfortunately, my poor smaller male has been getting bullied so he will get to hang out in a bachelor pad breeders' net once I get the other tanks set-up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wild Nut Posted November 21, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 21, 2012 Camera charged and pictures of my gardneri gold female up! She and her male went being listless and half-dead (have no idea why) to energiser bunnies. So far they have been scoffing down grindal worms as well as trying to spawn on the gravel and trying to spawn in the moss. The divider between them and the poliaki also fell over when the cat walked over the lid so now they are in together until the gardneri get moved to a new, bigger tank. Mrs poliaki who is unfazed by her boisterous tank mates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wild Nut Posted December 4, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 4, 2012 Some more killifish photos. My poliaki male is getting braver. Unfortunately, just after the photo of him was taken he went into full display and my stupid camera did not capture it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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