Re: BAP 'N Dump

[Donald Nute <dnute@ai.uga.edu>]

Kaycy asked why we keep the fish we do. Interesting question. I've been
keeping - and breeding - fish for more than 25 years, with one hiatus of
3-4 years when I got completely out of fish for a while. (Too many other
things going on in my life at that time.) I've had community tanks with
all sorts of fish, and I might use most anything in combination with
cichlids I'm keeping, but so far I have worked primarily with cichlids and
killies. I usually concentrate on one group or the other. When I work with
cichlids, I usually concentrate on one subgroup like mbuna or apistos.
Don't know why I do that; maybe it just makes the mechanics simpler.

The only killie I am keeping now is a strain of Fundulopanchax gardneri.
What I'm really working with now is apistos. The gardneri just keep on
coming even in tanks with apistos, and they are a pretty fish that make
good tank mates for apistos. A couple of years ago, I was keeping almost
only killies and I have worked with as many as 20 or so species at a time.

I've concentrated on Malawi cichlids and I've concentrated on Tanganyikan
cichlids. I really love these fish, just as a do killies and apistos. I
just don't have the time and room to keep everything I like at once. Each
of my "phases" seems to last 4-5 years, then I find myself rotating around
to something else. I've been through two killie phases, two Malawi phases,
one Tanganyikan phase, and I'm in my second apisto phase. That adds up to
more than 25 years, I know: phases typically overlap by a year or more.

Right now I have a very nice room set up with custom cabinets for storage,
fish, and a kitchen pantry. It's about 14' long and 7' wide. On one side,
there are cabinets up to almost waist height with two shelves above for
tanks. (The top shelf is pretty high, but at 6'2" I can work it pretty
well.) I have four 30 gallon tanks on the lower shelf installed in
separate bays designed to hold a 30 gallon tank. I have three 10 gallon
tanks, two 20 gallon tanks, shrimp hatchers, air pumps, and other
paraphernalia on the top shelf. We also keep a planted 55 gallon community
tank in our family room. This probably doesn't sound like a typical killie
setup, and it isn't. But it works well for me for killies as well as
cichlids. I liked to fill a 30 gallon tank with java moss and a few
breeders from one species, add baby brine shrimp each day, and watch as
the population built to near 100 fish in a natural way. I kept some setups
like this going with the same species for 4-5 years. That's how I kept my
gardneri until I rotated back into apistos. Now the gardneri are dithers
in 3-4 apisto tanks, managing to maintain their numbers using the floating
plants in these tanks. Of course, I handled annual killies and some hard
to breed species using the usual assortment of jars, shoe boxes, and what
have you.

Now I have apistos in five of the tanks in my fish room. Two more tanks
are taken up by a favorite breeding pair of C. festivum and their
offspring and some odds and ends larger neotropical cichlids I haven't
found homes for. I am breeding A. caetei, A. borelli, A. macmasteri, and
A. cacatuoides at the moment. I want to clear some more tanks to handle
more species, and I'd like to include some small west African species as
well.

So basically, I am a cichlidiot and a killie nut. I love cichlids for
their behavior (and beauty in many cases,) and I love killies for their
beauty, the variety of reproduction schemes, and the challenge that many
species present. But why do I keep a particular species for 4-5 year and
another for a year or less? Success is certainly one reason. If I work
with a species for a considerable period of time and can't seem to get
them to breed, I eventually lose interest. I like a challenge, but I don't
like banging my head against a brick wall. A species that takes to my fish
room becomes a comfortable old friend. I like having grandchildren and
great-grandchildren around. Keeping a species going for a long time and
for several generations is another kind of challenge, although a different
challenge than trying to breed a species that despises the kind of water
that comes out of my tap. So one reason I keep a species is because I can.

I'll add another dimension to this notion of doing what you can. I don't
have that many tanks - 10 tanks with a total capacity of 245 gallons
really isn't a lot. I also don't have a lot of time. I'll admit that I'm
lucky enough not to have to worry too much about expense, but I don't want
to get into elaborate technology, either. I'll add salt to water for
Africans (or anything else that looks puny,) but otherwise I don't want to
play with water chemistry. So I keep fish that seem comfortable with the
kind of water we have in this area. I'm lucky again, though, because our
water is naturally quite soft. I also admire fish that can live 3-4 weeks
between water changes if they have to in a well-planted tank with good
filtration and intelligent feeding. It may surprise you that there are
lots of apistos that will do this and breed regularly - at least they do
in my fish room.

I do like to obtain and try new species every few months. But as often as
not, they replace species that refused to adapt to my tanks or species
that I have kept for a long time but finally stopped working with and let
my stock drop very low through distiribution or natural demise. (Ever give
a friend a batch of juveniles and then worry that you'd given away all
your males/females???)

Kaycy, probably neither you nor anyone else wanted to hear this much, but
I thought your question was interesting.

Don

Donald Nute
Professor and Head, Department of Philosophy        (706) 542-2823
Director, Artificial Intelligence Center            (706) 542-0358
The University of Georgia                       FAX (706) 542-2839
Athens, Georgia  30602, U.S.A             http://ai.uga.edu/~dnute