With all the hundreds of beautiful killies available to the hobbyist its very easy to over extend yourself. I was just talking with a fellow killie nut on the phone from Maryland the other day. He made the statement that if you were working with fifty species and you spent five minutes on each species to pick the mop of eggs it would take you four hours and ten minutes each day to propagate those fish. Now remember that you also need to feed the fry at least twice daily and the adults at least once daily. Water changes will need to be made on a regular basis to keep your fish in peak condition. I suggest that you write on your glass tanks with a laundry pen the day that you did the water change. It will keep you on track to do more regular water changes that you can't remember in your head when you last charged the water anyway.

The purpose of this article is not to discourage anyone from keeping several species of killies, but to raise your fish in a healthy environment. If you can't or don't want to spend several hours a day in your fish room, then just keep a handful of species or don't try to spawn all your fish at the same time. We all know our own fish rooms and if we are honest with ourselves, we know if we are taking proper care of the fish we love to keep.

One other comment that I would like to make is we should never try to impress other hobbyists with the amount of killies we are keeping or the size of our fish room/rooms for that matter.

The beginning killie keeper should not feel intimidated by the size of someone else's fishroom or for that matter another fishkeeper. You should keep only the amount of species that you will want to spend time with without it being drudgery. Remember, you got started in the killie hobby probably because you saw those brilliantly colored fish. They were like nothing you had ever seen before. You just had to have them. Then you discovered more and more species. Just remember to discipline yourself. If you don't you could suffer from fishroom burnout and possibly even leave this exciting hobby.

On the other hand, I know of some killie nuts, their names withheld, that would quit their jobs today if they could just raise killies. They enjoy hours upon hours of working in their fish rooms. Some of the reasons are the challenge with working with the difficult species, while for some hobbyists its a way to unwind from their job.

Whatever the reason you have for keeping the most beautiful freshwater family of fishes on this earth keep them healthy, and by all means, keep it fun.