|
 I
would imagine new computers will have been bought for Christmas and
newcomers will be getting to grips with the Internet. First of all I
want to draw attention to our new website at.
www.bka.freeuk.com
. Henceforth all new Fish House.net columns will appear in this
website. All previous issues will still be found in
www.cfkc.demon.co.uk/club/bka.htm
. The novice would think that the introduction and registration page
in the demon site is the whole thing but look for the word ‘library’.
This is a link to other sites including the BKA site & is found at
the end of the text. This column along with links to those mentioned
in the column appears under the ‘News from the BKA’ bit.
If, after reading the
Newsletter you would like to explore these links just go through our
website and click the relevant link. It really is that simple.
My
apologies to Harold Pullan 152 for not replying sooner. Truth is I
lost your letter in the main pile of correspondance. Anyway, Harold
replied to my plea for that magic formula for keeping white worms.
Harold says "take it from me there isn’t one. The only
formula I know is LOOK AFTER THEM". Harold is a bit of a novice,
only keeping them from 1936. He keeps 20-25 cultures in a cold garage
and turns them out by the hundred weight (50 kgs). They are fed on
nothing but crumbed white bread made into a thin paste with water and
fed to them on the cover glass no thicker than cigarette paper. Harold
tried dog food and milk recipe’s but didn’t get on with
them. A fish breeder once asked Harold how he fed his worms – Do
you use a tweezer? No replied Harold, I use a shovel.
Harold’s secret is –
don’t feed them to your fish until the culture has had time to
mature. - Thanks Harold.
Alan’s tip is –
use fine coconut fibre. Introduce young worms to this.
Apparently when a worm egg hatches the medium it finds is the medium
it requires to grow in. Young worms can adapt to change but older ones
don’t. Could explain why new cultures fade on splitting into
different media. When selling at auction perhaps we should state what
medium we grow them in. What do you think ?
Click
on this site…. and you will find some interesting info. on
Fundulus majalis.www.vcrlter.virginia.edu/biod/query/text/FNDMJL_nathist.html
Those interested in North
American fish including killies can find a wealth of information/maps
on this site:www.utexas.edu/depts/tnhc/.www/fish/tnhc/na/naindex.html
Traffic
on the www.aka.org (just click the
link "killietalk" & follow the instructions to join the
list.) is always informative & Brian Watters that well known
Nothobranchius
collector/conservationist is always around with good comment.
For those of us poor souls
who enjoy collecting killie books at prices which would bring tears to
those north of the border. I would recommend Jim Forschey’s
website at www.seahorses.com
.It has had nearly 35,000 hits at the time of writing and is really
useful in increasing that library of killie or other fish books. The
books really are not that expensive.
I
had a great E-mail from Guy (BKA 277.12) in which he regretted not
keeping Fp.walkeri GH2. As I’ve said before, this one is not in
the UK (still waiting for someone to prove me wrong……please).
Guy said "It seems there are a lot of people out there
maintaining a number of species, but no-one’s sure exactly who’s
keeping what" I couldn’t agree more. So what is the solution
? Guy’s idea of a census has been tried before and it has proved
not to work as only <5% of members respond. So how do we monitor
species in our association?
First of all we need to
break down this barrier of the age-old mentality of keeping secret our
species maintenance list. I know we don’t want to be inundated by
requests for our fish… maybe a secret census withholding members
names/numbers would work. Let the column or the MC know your views.
Guy makes reference to a
priority list. This is a great idea. The AKA has an endangered species
group listing, should we do a similar thing and how should it be run?
Guy thinks the BKA should appoint a "Conservation Co-ordinator
Officer"
Also
in the E-mail he brought up the subject of advertisement posters for
fish shops etc. Now we don’t do anything like this so why not put
an A5 (Killi-News size) advert on our web site so you can download it
and put it in your local shop. Perhaps the MC could put one in our
Journal. What do you think?
Do
you remember Box B from the November Journal? Chris Cheswright
Chris@cheswright.freeserve.co.uk
sent me a mail saying that the fish looked like Pituna poranga. Chris
had problems connecting to the Brazilian web site. Hopefully my E-mail
helped him out. All the links in this column are tested out while
writing and connect OK. It is not uncommon however to find you cannot
connect especially during busy periods. First of all try connecting
again late at night or really early in the morning when traffic is
quieter. Killie sites now are getting hits more regularly and servers
are under greater demand (wait till televisions have the Internet
built in when digital comes out).
A new site I found had over
a thousand hits almost immediately after going online. Haven’t
you lot got anything better to do like breed killies!
A
BKA member (Julian Haffagee) has a new web site at
www.thebomb.clara.co.uk
He has only just started putting it together but you Nothobranchius
keepers should see it. Included photos are the new N.sp.moz 99/6 shown
below by the kind permission of Julian.
Julian has been instrumental
in putting together our own BKA website and has done a great job
starting it off. Over the coming months more information will be added
to build it up. All this takes a lot of time of course.
Sorry to boar you
non-webbies. Tips are a bit short on the ground at the moment but I
always welcome a letter or a phone call to put new stuff in.
Marc
Bellemans has an excellent site for Nothobranchius breeders and
www.ping.be/nothobranchius/
is where it can be found. One of the photos’s found in the site
is this one of N.virgatus shown below. Thanks to Marc for sending me
an original jpg image.
Any
comments, suggestions or new input please click on my link on the
column heading or write/telephone me. Let’s put more tips in
here.
back to index |
next |
