| What do career army officers
do in their spare time – Bungee jumping? Crocodile wrestling? Well, in the case
of Capt. W.A. Stone, he does just the same as all of us – he goes back home and looks
after his fish! Not just a couple of tanks in his living quarters either, but sixty
aquariums lined up from floor to ceiling around three walls of a room in his basement.
Bill Stone retired two years ago after forty two years as a Field
Engineer/Military Engineer/Civilian Employee with the Canadian Forces. Despite being
posted between Chilliwack B.C., Petawawa Ontario, Montreal, and Sydney Nova Scotia, he
managed to actively keep up his great interest in fishkeeping for thirty eight of those
years, except for a three year period when he was posted overseas and had to keep his
tanks in storage.
Bill and his wife Jean have settled into a house on a quiet street in a semi-rural
area near the army base at Chilliwack in British Columbia’s Fraser Valley, and Bill
divides his spare time between his fish, gardening, and playing Bass Drum with the kilted
Chilliwack and District Pipe Band. The Pipe Band is a major commitment, involving
playing at national and international festivals and competitions, as well as at local
events. But it is the fish we are interested in….
To repeat, Bill has sixty aquariums in his fish room. They are arranged
with military precision on metal shelving units. The shelves were made to be easily
dismantled and transported, for the occasions when Bill’s military career required a
move.
The upper shelves hold over a dozen highly decorated, fully landscaped 20 and 30
gallon aquariums, with gravel, rocks, wood and plants. They contain Bill’s
collection of breeding and juvenile angelfish, except for one tank that has neon
rainbows. They are individually lit with incandescent bulbs, and have under-gravel
filters.
Angelfish with fry
The lower shelves house Bill’s main interest – killifish. He
currently has about twenty species, mostly in ten gallon tanks. (Bill does not use
two or five gallon tanks, preferring the relatively large ten gallon size even for a pair
of tiny killifish, since water conditions remain more stable in a larger body of
water. ‘Gang spawning’ is also possible). Some of these tanks are
also fully landscaped , but most are bare bottomed with sponge filters and with the
appropriate egg laying medium for the species concerned – mops, peat, or Java
moss.
Bill’s breeding tanks are not brightly lit – each pair of tanks has two
25 watt chandelier lights attached to the wood shelf above. The lights are on
dimmers and are dimmed when Bill is not observing or working on the tanks. Killies
do not need bright light, many originating from deep within the rainforest. Bill
dims the angelfish lights at night rather than turning them off. He feels that the
angelfish parents are more comfortable and confident with ‘moonlight’ at night,
and therefore less likely to eat their fry.
The room is kept at 76-78 ° F by means of a 220 watt electric baseboard
heater. The many lights also contribute heat. A couple of tanks have their own
heaters, for fish that require higher temperatures. Room air is circulated by a fan,
which keeps the lower tanks at the correct temperature and reduces condensation problems.
Air for filtration is provided through a central system powered by a 1/3 h.p.
Sweetwater Regenerative Blower. It runs all the time and is somewhat noisy, so it is
installed in the garage and air is pumped in pipes through the house to the fish
room. Before this, Bill had built his own air system using a truck air brake
compressor. In case of failure, it was backed up by a unit made from an old '85
Chevy pollution pump.
Bill’s army experience and engineering abilities show up in many ways.
The fish room is immaculate in every respect, with everything in its well thought out
place. A spirit of ‘self sufficiency in the field’ inspired Bill to make
much of his equipment himself. He made many of his own aquariums both wooden and all
glass, and even made his own sponge filters – a square of glass with silicone feet
and a perforated tube attached, with the cylindrical sponge cut by rotating a sharpened
tin can. More impressive still is his brine shrimp hatchery, a complicated looking
but very efficient gadget for hatching and retrieving large quantities of brine shrimp
(see photo). Other touches of ingenuity abound and are in fact somewhat
overwhelming. It would take several visits and many pages to describe all the
evidence of Bill’s great knowledge of fishkeeping. One small detail is that all
the killifish tanks are labelled with the respective species names in Latin (as they
should be), - but not just any old label – the labels are printed and are magnetic to
attach neatly to a specific spot on each tank.
Brine shrimp hatchery
One gets the impression that Bill gets almost as much satisfaction out of
breeding and rearing worms and bugs for fish food as he does from fish! He rears
several different types of live food. The smallest are microworms, which he feeds
bread and milk rather than the more smelly oatmeal. Grindal worms are the next up in
size: he breeds these in plastic trays of soil kept in a dark closet. Brine shrimp
and daphnia are similar in size. Finally, Bill breeds white worms.
Bill rarely feeds dry or prepared flakes or pellets to his fish. Other than
live foods, the staple for all his fish is beef heart, prepared according to a recipe he
first published in a 1989 issue of The American Killifish Association.
Bill spends about an hour feeding his fish once a day (baby angels twice a day),
and a weekday doing fortnightly 30% water changes.
As well as the different worm breeding operations, Bill’s closet and shelves
and cabinets are full of killifish eggs. He keeps the plant spawners’ eggs wet
in small trays for hatching after 14-21 days. The annuals’ eggs are kept dry
(like moist pipe tobacco) in peat filled plastic bags, labelled and stored according to
the month they are due to hatch.
Microworm cultures
Killifish are not dealt with extensively in the pet trade. New species and
strains are collected in the field by amateur hobbyists, who travel overseas (to East
Africa, South Africa, South America, etc.) and bring home the fish, which they then
distribute, free or otherwise, to established breeders through networks of Killie
Clubs. Killifish travel easily: adults only need enough water to cover their bodies,
and dry eggs in peat are no problem to mail.
Bill is a member of his local club, The Vancouver Area Killie Club, which was
founded in 1984 and has about twenty members. They meet once per month in
members’ houses, and at each meeting there is an auction of fish, and also plants and
other items. One member is designated the Species Acquisition member, who obtains
fish and eggs from other clubs, and another member keeps the Species List. Club
members currently keep about eighty species of killifish between them. Bill is
developing a web page on the internet for the club, which can be seen at http://users.uniserve.com/~wastone
Landscaped angelfish tanks above, killifish breeding below.
In cabinet: microworm cultures and killifish egg storage trays
The VAKC is affiliated with The Canadian Killifish Association (journal
“Killie Dirt”) and both are affiliated with The American Killifish
Association. The AKA produces a bi-monthly journal and a monthly newsletter.
Until his Pipe Band responsibilities got in the way, Bill often arranged his annual
holiday to coincide with the AKA Annual Convention, which is held on the last weekend in
May (Memorial Day). He attended two conventions in California, and one each in
Buffalo, North Bergen N.J., Cleveland and Cincinnati, and has a number of plaques and
trophies in his rec. room to prove it.
Bill’s engineering talents also extend to woodwork. When not busy in his
fish room he can relax in his rec. room by looking at a unique 90 gallon tank he made
years ago using ¾ inch mahogany veneered plywood with a green fibreglass lining.
The tank contains a collection of mature angelfish bred by Bill or his friends, and
numerous plants including four large healthy Amazon swords.
  
Some of Bill's fishkeeping trophies
Postscript: Bill
would like to point out that many killifish species are endangered or extinct in the wild,
due to habitat destruction. Serious killifish keepers are dedicated to keeping these
species alive and their bloodlines pure.
When you keep killifish, do not put different but related species in the same
tank, in case they breed and produce cross species.
It is also important to keep the aquariums, incubation trays, incubating bags
of peat and hatching containers labelled with the species’ proper name and location
code. When you sell or give away a pair of fish, ensure that you label the bag for the
recipient’s information as well.
Killifish can jump, and travel from tank to tank. Keep your tanks covered and
related species apart – their tanks should not be adjacent or above or below each
other.
Do not introduce a related species into a permanently set up tank that you
just had similar species in, since there could be eggs in the gravel or plants and this
could also result in hybrids. Bill switches tanks between annuals and non-annuals or
leaves the tank without fish for triple the incubation time, to ensure there are no fry
lurking to cause hybrids.
Note: Bill's article about making beef heart fish food may be viewed
in Aquarticles' Aquarium
Management/Feeding section. |