Had a little more success on the killi front yesterday. Apparently I got lucky, and was able to collect eggs from adults grown up from the first set of South American killifish eggs I've ever tried, Rachocia sp. "Monteria" (looks like splendens to me, but I'm not a taxonomist).
The highlight of this project for me was acquiring these eggs from Frans Vermeulen, whose work was a huge part of my initial interest in South American annuals.
I had a rough setback with these guys early on-- I left the fry together as their sizes began to vary, and fairly quickly the largest males began to eat the smaller fry. From a batch of 30 eggs, around 15-20 hatched, of which around 8 were left when I realized what was happening . The first day of trouble I assumed they were all hiding, the second day I realized I had a problem. These fish grow unbelievably fast (as their average life-span is only a few months), and after the biggest male realized he could eat his tank mates, he went after the smallest ones relentlessly.
Funny thing, the small ones are the females. I netted out all the remaining fish I could find (all eight), and put them in a few different tanks to grow out (assuming if I had trouble in a particular tank, the other group might be ok). As I watched them color up over the next few weeks, male, male, male, male, male, male, male, unknown, I began to worry. Then, remarkably, 2 new fry appeared in the original tank where I had wet the peat. Literally, only two.
My last juvenile from the group of 8 started to show a bright red streak in his tail, and I knew I was in trouble, but after a month or so I had the pleasant discovery that the last two fry were a pair. The same built-in safeguards that keep these fish around in the wild protected them against my folly in the fish room, which I really appreciated.
So, to recap, 30+ eggs turned into (maybe) 20 fry, which quickly cut each other down to half, of which 1 was a female. That one blessed female has now given me around 35 eggs (more than I started with!), and will presumably/hopefully give a few more batches prior to passing on in a month or two.
In case anyone actually reads this...I'll ask for advice. The male from the lucky pair isn't the nicest looking of the group. He's small, and not as amazingly colored as some of his brothers. That said, I'm getting good eggs. If you were managing the group, now that there are at least some eggs in storage, would you pull the original male and introduce the biggest/prettiest (in this case, it's the same) male in case the colors are genetic? Do I even want fry from a male that knocked down so many of his siblings? (which may work fine if carefully managed, but could quickly be extinction if left to their own devices?)
Here's a horrible photo of the nice male. (that doesn't show any of the real colors, but that's what everyone says about fish photos, right?)
Currently breeding male doesn't have the full red fringe on the tail, and none of the aquamarine fringe on the fins.
