My son and I attended the Southwest Area Killifish Event yesterday. It’s an annual fish convention in Phoenix that has been held for fifteen years. Generally, the lineup features three guest speakers, a raffle, a silent auction, a live auction, and just all-around meeting new and re-meeting old fish friends.
Jim Fong
Jim Fong, from Sunnyvale, CA, spoke on raising fish from the genus Nothobranchius. Those who follow this blog will recall I ordered Notho eggs a couple of times last year with very limited success. He gave some tips and ranked the different species in difficulty categories according to his experiences.
Greg Sage
Greg Sage, who owns Select Aquatics in Erie Colorado, spoke on selective breeding, and he discussed several lines that he developed. He works mainly with livebearers, and seems to focus on swordtails (genus Xiphophorus). He has some very attractive fish that he has produced in his fishroom.
Aaron Ambos
Finally, Aaron Ambos, who is a biologist for the Nevada Water Authority, spoke on native fishes of the Great Basin Desert. His talk focused on spring fishes, native to some hot spring areas north of Las Vegas. I’m hoping to get some interesting fish from him in the future (but obviously not the protected species his talk covered).
How I Did
In the raffle I broke even, winning mostly food that I stuck on the shelf for use when my twenty other containers are exhausted. In the silent auction, I won some decapsulated shrimp eggs–food for fry. In the live auction I won an electronic TDS (total dissolved solids) meter.
I was outbid on fish in every instance. Everything I brought went home with somebody else, which is good. My desert goby fry brought in almost $20 for the event. Which brings up an interesting point. The event is completely free for everyone. The objective is to break even, and auction & raffle proceeds pretty much pay for everything, including the beverages and dinner. We SF people have to figure out a way to pull off that sort of scheme.
