Traditionally, some folks attending SF conventions will give a convention report when they get home. I doubt that is so common among fishkeepers, but since my readers tend not to be fishkeepers (yet anyway) I thought I would post a convention report for my day at the Southwest Area Killiefish Event (SAKE).
I arrived around 12:30PM, about a half hour after the event started but still well within the general milling about that occurs before anything interesting gets started.
I brought with me two bags of class N Endler’s Livebearers fry. One bag contained 7 unsexed fry, the other bag held one colored juvenile male, two males just starting to show color, one known female, and a few unsexed fry. Both bags were placed into the silent auction.
I bid on several bags of fish, including 6 Julidochromus transcriptus fry, a bag of small least killifish (which are not killifish at all but rather livebearers), a pair of Pachypanchax playfairii (which are Madagascar killifish), and a bag of java moss.
I went back and forth on the julies until the bids got past what I was willing to pay for them. Same case with the least killifish. I did come home with the Pachypanchax and the java moss. The latter was no surprise because I bid on one of four bags with no bids, but I’ve been looking for the stuff for a while.
So a small take, 2 killifish and java moss.
The program was quite interesting. There were three speakers.
* John Boylan: “Panama 2009, Old Friends and New Fishes”
* Dr. Paul Loiselle: “The Killifishes of Madagascar”
* Allen Wood (2011 Chairman of the American Livebearer Association): “A Fishroom for Livebearers or Evolution of a Fishroom”
It’s a bit different from SF conventions as everyone basically spends the entire day in one room. Everyone listens to the speakers while sitting at tables or milling about the silent auction.
Boylan discussed a couple of fish collecting trips to Panama. It looks like great fun but requires a lot of planning and paperwork.
Loiselle is a professional researcher of killifishes and has made many trips to Madagascar. His talk was the most technical of the three, but was quite interesting.
Wood discussed how his 150-tank fishroom evolved, and did it with humor and great storytelling. He had some creative solutions to many different problems over the years, some inevitable, some self-inflicted. But he has been keeping fish for 60 years and is still learning, just like the rest of us.
I didn’t really participate in the live auction, mainly because most of what was being auctioned off I had no idea how to keep alive. Unlike my Pachypanchax, some of the more rare killifishes have some strict water condition requirements. I decided to leave those fish for the more experienced killi keepers. In fact, I left around 9:00PM because I did not plan to bid on anything and there were still about 200 bags to auction off and they hadn’t started yet.
Overall, a fun time. I met some interesting people and made new friends. The Pachypanchax are currently living in a temporary 2.5-gallon tank awaiting more appropriate housing. Better than living in a little plastic bag, though.
