I did some experimenting and found that I could have 10,000 emitters showing (I used 16000 as the ID #) at one time. Anything above that would not show up. I was using a 32 X 32 image that is 3.05KB in size. I also coded multiple emitters that could be deleted while in-game. It worked flawlessly without problems.
I have 2.5 GB of system RAM. Something else you might consider is using FLUSH VIDEO MEMORY near the start of your program. Perhaps you could post the code you are using.
So many games to code.......so little time.