An interesting development. I have one Aplocheilus lineatus Golden Wonder fry with a pronounced dark spot where the vertical stripe would be on the wild type fish. There are also several others that show this to a lesser degree. I was told by a member on the Facebook group that this could happen and he was right. I will keep my eye out for more.
Another thing is that I had a little runt lineatus and I should have culled him but I liked him and kept him. He took off and had a big growth spurt and is now maturing into a magnificent specimen. The things you see when are maintaining a single species !
Awhile back Gary Elson had an article in a recent JAKA and said that everyone should try their hand at maintaining a single species for a while. I understand why now. So much can be learned about a fish by focusing on just one.

Glad to read you are still having fun!

What happened with the Gardner? Did they bloat and die? They don’t tolerate a rich diet for long.

Yes, it’s fun, this Killifish keeping. They are very interesting fish. Some of the reading I’ve been doing lately in the JAKA and other sources has got me looking at the Fundulus species. I guess some more tanks are in my future.
The gardneri just kind of wasted away on me. They were picky eaters and often would not eat at all for days at a time. The females were the first to go. It’s a shame too because I thought they were really nice fish. Same thing with the playfairii. Just not robust or healthy. My store bought Golden Wonders eat, breed and thrive like Convict Cichlids. No stopping them.
Another interesting development today. It’s springtime in Montana and the mountain snowpack that feeds the Yellowstone River is melting and feeding it. My tap water is coming out at 60 PPM.

Hello,

That is kind of strange for gardneri. In my experience they are not timid and will take any food given. My problem with them is that they are gluttonous and will over eat, bloat and die. I had playfairi briefly and they also seemed pretty tough.

I hope you can find some Fundulus to try. Fundulus zebrinus and Fundulus kansae are native to Montana and, while photos look rather dull, I have seen zebrinus in the flesh and they are awesome.

If you would like to try some Fundulopanchax scheeli let me know. They have no problem with dried food and living in community.

Tyrone,
Thank you for that offer of the F. scheeli but I’m going to stick with my lineatus for now and keep my eyes open for Fundulus. The Fundulopanchax species are very pretty but I like dull silvery minnow looking fish for some strange reason.
Thank you also for that information on Fundulus zebrinus and F. kansae. I recently acquired the Peterson Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes after seeing the NANFA website. I’m thinking about joining that organization as keeping native fishes appeals to me.

Well, after much thought I decided on a new Killifish. It isn’t going to be the native Fundulus zebrinus I hoped to find close to my home. A 500 year flood on the Yellowstone River last month has effectively put the kibosh on that idea. Pretty sure that population is well downstream if they were even there. It isn’t going to be Fundulopanchax gardneri either. I’m still hurt after the miserable failure I had with them. But . . . there is one fish that has always caught my eye and upon seeing them for sale in this months BNL F&E list I got ahold of the guy and ordered three pairs of Aphyosemion australe Orange-Red strain hybrid. I know this is a common fish that everyone has probably had but I like their looks. Since joining the AKA in 2019 I’ve learned a few things that will help me that I didn’t know when the Gardneri beat me up. I sure hope this works. I want fry from these fish. Fry that grow up and give more fry.

I got my three pairs of Aphyosemion australe Orange/Red at the end of August. They were in the mail for over five days on some pretty warm days but all six fish arrived alive. Now I’m over fifty days in with them and no eggs and no fry. I did see one egg just before the female ate it. The pairs are in separate tanks that have mops and tons of Java Moss. They eat well and appear very healthy. They sure are pretty but that’s all , just pretty , not prolific. I am never going to get another Killie ever again that people say is so easy to breed. Next time it will be the kind that nobody has any success with. Maybe then my luck will change.

Medric,

Maybe something happened during shipping? I have heard that some fish shipments have been affected (sterilized) by x-rays.

F.P Gardneri are SUPER easy! If I remember correctly, I got a trio in July and they are multiplying like crazy. Just last week I gave a friend two trios (2 males and four females) and the males are almost all the way colored up.

I have the trio in a 5 gallon tank with a plastic log and a bunch of guppy grass and a sword plant in the back. The tds is about 175 and the ph of the water is around 8. My water comes from a well that has a softener on it. I feed them flake food in the morning and crumble some of it for the fry. I have taken around 20-30 fry out and there are still 15-20 that are big enough to see. I change about 40-50% water weekly.

The male continuously searches for the females and breeds with them. they are all healthy and prolific!

If at first you don’t succeed try try again.

Thank you Dennis. I heard about that X-Ray thing you mentioned. I suppose anything is possible. My pH is close to 8.0 and my TDS runs at 60 PPM. I have an R/O unit and I keep it there. I add 4 teaspoons aquarium salt per 10 gallons of water and do weekly 50 % water changes. I read one source that says the eggs are light sensitive so I put Salvinia in the tanks. My tanks are not brightly lit but adding that top cover changed the fishes behavior. They are much more out and about now. They weren’t exactly shy and retiring before but they are much more active now. Funny how such a small change can have such a big effect. I watched one pair swimming upside down and spawning into the Salvinia Rasbora Het style. That pair spawns continuously everywhere , into the sand and sponge filter and the mops and plants. I sure thought I would find fry by now so something must be going on that I do not observe. I rule out fungus because I figure I would see that. I also have no snails at all . Maybe I better give up on the au naturale method and do like a real Killie keeper does and pick eggs. Maybe my laziness is thwarting me.

I wouldn’t give up just yet. In my own limited experience and from what I have heard these Killifish are super easy to multiply without picking the eggs.

I agree having a canopy of plants to block the light in over half of the tank works great for me. The only thing different in my tank from yours is the TDS is lower in your tank, which isnt a bad thing. And salt I do not use salt in that tank. Also, I do about 30% water changes.

I mostly feed Flake food and crumble a bit for any unseen fry that may be in there.

What size are they?

I wouldn’t give up just yet. In my own limited experience and from what I have heard these Killifish are super easy to multiply without picking the eggs.

I agree having a canopy of plants to block the light in over half of the tank works great for me. The only thing different in my tank from yours is the TDS is lower in your tank, which isnt a bad thing. And salt I do not use salt in that tank. Also, I do about 30% water changes.

I mostly feed Flake food and crumble a bit for any unseen fry that may be in there.

What size are they?

My three pairs are all adults of 2 1/2 inch length. The females are a tiny bit smaller but they are all plump and well grown. One female is aggressive toward her mate and bullies him. Never seen that before. Another female is shy and retiring but not to the point of exhaustion from her mates advances. The third female is a party girl. She loves her mate and goes looking for him. The full range of female expression in these three individual females. Well , anyway , I keep up my vigil and look for fry every day. I keep them well fed and my plants are flourishing and provide ample cover for any youngsters that may appear.

Anybody read that article in the JAKA Volume 55 Number 2 where the guy went to Gabon ? He talked about the fish he was collecting being very touchy about being handled. He couldn’t net them without them croaking on him.
Last week I was doing water changes and I got one of my australe in the siphon hose. They are very curious about that siphon hose and I watch like a hawk and I stay ready to jerk it away from them but last week one got pulled in. I caught her but released her immediately . She died a few seconds later. She was smaller than the tube diameter so she couldn’t have gotten squished so I have to assume they are soft bodied and delicate. Great huh ? Dang fish !

Way back when, before the dawn of time, an engineer friend and I built a centralized filter system for around a dozen small killi tanks – 2.5, 10, 20L.
Each tank had a return that was simply a bit of vinyl hose that in turn had one of those ‘inlet filter’ things you get for power filter inlets shoved into it.

The central filter was a wet/dry filter, where ‘dry’ part had a ‘drip plate’ comprised of an old UGF filter plate, atop a bucket full of ‘bio balls’ which were smallish orange plastic things, very spiky. The wet part was the same – I had won a big trash bag full of the things in some fish club raffle somewhere and had really no other use for it.

Well, on occasion, one of the inlets would come off and some killies or others, usually gardneri (I grew a LOT of gardneri this way, the filter actually worked great except for the occasional overflow in the sump), would travel up the hose. Through the manifold (a bunch of 1/2" and 1" PVC as I recall), then past the drip plate which didn’t completely seal off the top of the dry section, past the bioballs into the wet section where they merrily swam around till I nettted them out. I did pull out the occasional deader from the dry section where it had gotten speared on a bioball.

I eventually put sponge filters on the inlets. That stopped the migration, but the noise of the filter system pump eventually annoyed me enough that I switched each tank to be a separate standalone tank with box & sponge filters. That didn’t work nearly as well.

Moral: They’re hardier than you think.

Hello,

In my experience AUS are quite tough and have never lost one to handling — I have had them fall out of mops onto the floor and be fine.

What you can do is put a coarse sponge over the intake of the siphon. For fry tanks I use a finer sponge.

I hope your other fish avoid the same fate.

Thanks for the encouragement and experience guys. Plain old dumb things can happen and I probably forgot that but I’m a lot more cautious now.
On the plus side I found eggs in her tank and now I am waiting to see if they hatch out.