The Editor of a rival periodical once mentioned to me people tended to be like the fish they keep and it just can't be said that for the most part killi folks are outgoing boisterous poeple. There are the odd (hi Jim) and sometimes really odd (hi Oleg) exceptions but for the most part the average AKA crowd act as though they'd feel safer hiding in some plants hoping to lure a mate just like their finned counterparts.

Although I'd been aware of and a member of the AKA for almost a decade I'd never attended any of the conventions and going to one is a bit of an eye opener. These people are serious hobbyists and if you're family thinks you're a bit odd because you won't shut up about these stupid little killifish and how can you know so many utterly useless trivialities about what came from collection point KM17 on the 1985 Dutch expedition then you've found you're group; they're all like that.

I have a memory of a gold Rolex watch flying around on the arm of a tall bearded men who seems to always be either smiling, grinning, or talking. Loudly. Other than the fish I came away with that weekend (whose pictures are all online) the memory of this guy was probably the strongest one there. He seemed somehow larger than life. He stood out in a crowd.

Fast forward about 6 years or so and the LA killi club was going on a field trip to the San Fransisco Bay Area; our host, that is, the idiot that somehow convinced his wife to allow a half dozen or so really strange fish poeple to camp out in his living room for a weekend was Dale Weber; Mr. gold Rolex from the Wisconsin convention. Dale and his wife were utterly charming and congenial hosts, and how could you not feel at home in a place with a brine shrimp hatchery on the kitchen counter next to Mr. Coffee?

This is all relevant because I never met anybody that so loved Brazil and the fish that come from there - to the point that Dale himself once predicted that if fish club politics didn't kill him then he'd probably die in the Brazilian jungle on a collecting expedition. This prophecy eerily came true in the early 90's - Dale was killed in a car accident at dusk. So the man that Rivulus weberi is named after is gone, and I tell my kids his ghost sill walks through the Brazilian jungle peeking into ponds, crouched down on hands and knees.

So Dale lives on, on the net. Stick his name inside a pair of double quotes and see what that finds you in a search engine. His smiling face is out there, and so are the words he wrote about fish from Brazil to Burlington, preserved for all time in a way prominent aquarists decades earlier never dreamed of.

A popular idea is that South American annuals are "brown fish" causing fan and critic alike to refer to them as "dirt fish" but anybody who has seen a number of these species in good condition know otherwise. Sometimes rivalling marine fish in color (what killi article would be complete without that old chestnut?) and showing more grace than an freshwater angelfish this is perhaps one of the most interesting killi families around; it's certainly one of the most diverse - from half-inch brightly colored little jewels in the genus Campbellolebias to the monsters that look like bass crossed with Piranha in the genus Megalebias they show a diversity not found in many families of fish. Yeah, you heard that right, "bass" killies; utterly nondescript, huge, they eat about 10 times their own weight of their own kind each day.

Is it any wonder then that these fish are the least common even in killi-keeper circles? Or that special attention needs to be paid to make sure these things keep going? They're not like wild bivs where you can just throw them in a big tank with lots of plants and as long as there's light they're survive no matter what else you do, oh no, these guys require maintenance, both hourly feedings in the case of Megalabias and species maintenance in terms of the whole family, for these poor things keep popping in and out of existence both in the wild and in captivity. Luckily new collection points in the wild are found and species held to exist only in captivity have shown to not be, but the destruction of the habitats at the rate they are going will one day ensure than a time will come when some species really will only exists in captivity. Thus the primary focus of this group is species maintenance.

Even if you work with just one species you're helping preserve biodiversity. Oh, and these fish ain't cheap either. You might even make so much you'd break even keeping these things going!

"When and where did Simpsonichthys boitonei, known as the Brasilian Pira" first appear? At the new zoo being constructed at the new capital of Brazil, Brasilia, a zoo official named Saturnino Maciel de Carvalho was responsible for collecting live fishes to feed the aquatic birds of the zoo. During one of these collections in 1959, he noticed the beautiful appearance of five specimens of a fish. He brought these to the head of Zoological Services, Sr. Jose Boitone. Sr. Boitone, not being familiar with pisciculture, took it upon himself to send specimens to the renown scientist and ichthyologist, Dr. Antenor de Carvalho, in Rio de Janeiro. Dr. Carvalho described and classified this new species in 1959, giving it the name of Simpsonichthys boitonei. The species name was in honor of Sr. Boitone for having sent the specimens for classification."