This is how
everything started. I got my first fish tank for Christmas back in
1985. This picture was taken some time in 1986. At one stage I had 27 tanks
ranging in size from 20 cm to 1.2 m. I am addicted to fish.
This all started after trip to the snake park when I said I wanted a pet snake. It wasn't long before I came home with a jar of slug eaters (a slug eating snake). I was only four and already a good snake catcher. I wasn't allowed to keep them. After two more years of me catching snakes my mother couldn't tolerate it and eventually got me a gold fish bowl in 1984. The next Christmas I got the tank and that was that. A few years later I still got my snakes but they all gone now. I think my mother preferred the snakes in the end as they were less of a bother.
I've mainly keep killifish, Tanganyika cichlids and rainbows along with small populations of Kribs and other odds and ends. Some of the most charming fish I have had have been my pygmy gouramies but they all succumbed to inbreeding and neglect. I can’t wait to get some more pygmies!
My favourite rainbow is Melanotenia praecox, the neon rainbow. I had a large group of them at one stage but they all died when the tank's pH crashed. I've had them several times and each time I have spawned and then killed them off... I will try again.
My experiences with killies began one day in 1989 when I walked into a pet shop and saw 200 + Aphyosemion australe in the display tanks. I walked out with a pair and dumped them into my busy 3 foot community tank. I only had one tank at the time. A week later the male was exhumed from his dusty tomb behind the colourful curtains seen in the above pic. No one knows what happened to the female...
I never saw killies on sale again.
In 1996 I read an article in the local fish mag about a guy at Stellenbosch University who kept Nothobranchius Killies. The next year, the day of my registration, I went and met Prof. Bellstedt who generously reciprocated with a trio of Nothobranchius sp.Caprivi and later with some N. korthausae. Not till the N. foerschi did I finally succeed in keeping them alive and spawning them. My success with the foerschi catapulted me into the wonderful world of killies!
With the generous help of such people as Dirk Bellstedt, Mike Reid, Bob Morenski and Otto Schmidt I soon had loads of killies of many different types and colours.
My favourite killi is still the
foerschi. The N. kafuensis ZAM 97/1
come a close second though and is in narrow
contention with the rachovii “Beira
'98” for that position. The N. kilomberoensis
“Minepa TAN 00/14” gives every
one a run for their money and provided I can breed
it, it will become my firm favourite. I have had some difficulty with it though. The new yellow korthausae,
"Mafia Island TAN 02-5" is another exceptional new comer to my collection.
My adventures with Tanganyikan cichlids began a few years back when I picked up some Neolaprologous calliurius. These fish were stunning and peaceful. I bred a number of generations but my fish were later decimated by a renegade Haplochromis obliquedens. I'm still looking for this fish! I have since bred N. sp. Daffodil (which spawns like clock work and won't stop!!!), a Julidochromis transcriptus and Telmatochromis vittatus.
I hope you found something of interest. If you happened upon any mistakes please let me know! I can be contacted at tgenade@freeshell.org.
Last updated 07/11/04