Bettas Produce Large Spawns.  When breeders spawn bettas, they likewise set up dozens of breeder pairs and can usually pull hundreds of eggs from each pair.  Betta eggs hatch rapidly.  The fry are ready to eat the same week.

LA
Here's a pretty good clump of killie eggs.  You get five instead of 500.

Killies Produce Small Spawns.  When breeders spawn plant-spawning killifish, they usually spawn one pair at a time.  After a few days, they look through each strand of their spawning mop and pull maybe a dozen eggs.  They store these in carefully dated containers and repeat the process every three days or so.  Killie eggs start hatching in two or three weeks.  Some take longer.

LA
Most killie eggs will hatch in two to four weeks.  

Killie Hatch Rates Vary a Lot.  Larger killifish fry cannot be mixed with smaller fry.  They like their taste too much.  So, the killie raiser winds up with numerous small containers of small quantities of fish.  And those were the easy ones to hatch.  See Plant Spawning Killifish for tips on how to better control their hatch rates.

Killie Eggs Take Longer to Hatch.  Peat spawners throw more eggs over a three-day period, but they take longer to hatch – some as long as three months.  And, they don’t all hatch on the same day.  Once again, the killie raiser winds up with several containers of small quantities of various sized killifish.

You Can’t Mix Killies.  Angel raisers and betta raisers can throw all their fry of equal sizes together.  Killie keepers cannot.  Nearly all the females of killie groups look alike.  Certainly enough alike that male killies willingly breed with females of any closely related species.  Killie breeders very carefully maintain the integrity of the different species they raise.  They do not want to raise hybrid cross-breeds.

LA
Orlon spawning mops work better than live plants.

Killies Breed Easily.  Most killifish breed quite readily.  Most killie fry are not that hard to rear.  Unfortunately, not that many result from each spawning.

LA
Male Aplocheilus linneatus.  Golden wonders usually come in so small you can't sex them.  

Few Commercial Varieties Are Available.  Some four species have appeared on the price lists I have seen over the last five years or so.  Only half were what I’d call desirable species. And when you ask the average wholesaler, they cannot give you a species name.  They call them “golden wonders” instead of Aplocheilus linneatus.  Or, they call them some equally inventive name.  Worse yet, they sometimes call the same fish different names.  Very few killies have common names.

Killies Will Remain a “Cottage Industry.”  Killies easily rank among the prettiest fishes on the market.  Because they are only raised by very dedicated hobbyists, they will never be a standard community fish.  The logistics of rearing them will always keep them a pricey fish.  Enjoy them if you can find them.  LA.

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