Ronnie Lee, my killifish buddy in Singapore, has his own method of collecting and incubating the eggs of the Nothobranchius.
Instead of a coffee filter, Ronnie uses a handkerchief to sieve the peat from the water. The hankerchief is spread out on top of a bucket and held in position by clothes’ pegs.
The peat from the breeding bowl is flushed out on to the hankerchief with clean aged water.
The peat is left to stand in the hankerchief for a while to let the water drip out. In the background, you can see the 2 glass bowls that Ronnie was using as breeding bowls. I would advise against using bowls made of glass as fish can be quite stupid sometimes. They will have problems finding their way into a transparent glass bowl and when by chance they do, they won’t be able to find their way out.
Having said that, however, Ronnie’s fish could be smarter than mine. Ronnie’s pretty smart, that’s for sure.
The handkerchief is twisted into a ball.
Ronnie turns the hankerchief several times until a very tight ball is formed around the peat.
A towel is then used to absorb the water around the ball.
The peat is bagged immediately although it is still a bit on the damp side. Ronnie does not leave the peat to dry between newspapers.
The peat is compacted tightly at the bottom of the ziplock plastic bag. The bag is then folded over twice, labelled accordingly and kept in a store room until the expected wetting day.
Killifish breeders all over the world will tell you that there’s no one standard method to hatch and raise killies. As they love to say on the internet, “Your mileage may vary”.
First publication: Killies.com
Source: aquarticles.com (no longer available)
