Parosphromenus-Newsletter No. 101 Bielefeld (Germany) August 20th, 2012
Dear friends, in this newsletter we will speak about new members, our new specialist-line-up, a question regarding P. sumatranus, a short note on excursions, the American edition of the Amazonas-issue on licorice gouramis and some other short news. And exceptionally we repeat our nice logo that we used for the 100th newsletter…
1. We welcome new friends
In the very beginning of our project (in the first newsletters 2005 and 2006) we have named the new persons who have become members during the past weeks. Then at a certain moment this were too many people, and we stopped that usage. But this was not good a decision, for most of us are interested in the growth of the project. Therefore we have decided to reassume that tradition.
As the newest members we welcome especially:
– Romain Nassinvera from Béziers in France,
– Jim Robinson from Missisauga in Canada,
– Adesorn Nonpayom from Bangkok in Thailand,
– Peter Marceau from Cumberland/Rhode Island, Rachel O‘ Leary from York/Pennsylvania und Ronald M. Burch, all U.S.,
– Andreas Gahler from Rathmannsdorf, Andreas Paulus from Wirschweiler, Max Kellermann from Mülheim und Veronika Franke-Bahls from Wuppertal, all Germany.
We continue in the next newsletter.
2. Spezialists: please decide, take action and give us a note!
In the last newsletter we announced that we are determined to establish a second track of sustainment besides the godfather-program: that of species specialists. Whatever else one keeps or breeds: We try to find one or more persons who feel responsible for one single Paro-species. Then we can be sure: This species is at all times available with him or her.
Several people have praised that concept, but nobody so far has advertised himself as willing to be such a specialist for species x. Therefore we repeat that clear call: Please, join in and tell us! We have only two specialists of this kind so far: Bernhard Lukiewski (Berlin/D) for P. quindecim and Thoams Beu (Frankfurt/D) for filamentosus. All other species are free.
Wes hall write to a few friends who seem especially qualified for certain species, but there is better a way: self-announcement, saying I try it with species x. (That’s never for eternity. You can stop that assignment at any time; this should be quite obvious.
3. Who is especially experienced with P. sumatranus?
There are some puzzling facts with P. sumatranus. This fish which was taken in 1955 as a subspecies of “deissneri” by the scientific describer W. Klausewitz is definitely a different species, but more than that: it obviously consists of two different types. The main type is in habitus and behaviour similar to the majority of the other licorice gouramis: its body structure resembles them and it displays head-down. The other type which is not much different from the first in colour design has a markedly
slimmer body, resembling nearly ornaticauda or parvulus, and is displaying head-up, sometimes in totally vertical position.
We ask: Is it possible that this is the same species? We doubt this very much. As far as we know there are no transitional intermediate forms. As it seems, all animals presently in stock belong to the first type; is that true? We have kept the second type some years ago ourselves and we bred it; there are photos of the totally different courtship behaviour. Are some pairs of this very interesting form still somewhere in stock?
4. Successful excursions of Nicolas Buisson, Christian Hinz and Bernd Bussler
In July Nicolas Buisson travelled western Malaysia in June. He wrote to Peter Finke (July 15th ): “My travel in Malaysia finishes today. I found in a small river ending in Tasik Chini (Lake of Chini) Parosphromenus nagyi, in Kampung Gumum. I come back with 20 fishes. I hope to diffuse this fish when I will obtain fry. I also found in the same river Betta pi, Polycentrus schomburgkii, Luciocephalus pulcher, half bec, Sphaerichthys osphromenoides, Pagio kuhlii, Barbus tetrazona and Trichopsis vittata.” By the way, the pH of this ditch that was highly changed by human influence was alcaline: 7.8! This means that the fish will probably not be able to permanently survive there. In the meantime Nico and his fish have safely arrived in France; the fish seem to resemble the Kuantan-type of nagyi.
Christian Hinz and Bernd Bussler were equally successful on excursion in western Malaysia. They report of only recently destroyed habitats. We will receive more precise informations later.
5. Announcement of a new series
All of us are interested in Paros and in the friends of these fish. We therefore shall start a new series in one of the next newsletters: the short presentation of single members of the Parosphromenus-project. We think of successful breeders and their methods, coming from different countries, but of other people too.
6. Short notes
– Olivier Perrin (Paris) has presented a very nice series of breeding photos of P. parvulus; some of them now to be seen within the species page of that species. One photo is presently the catching picture on our start-page;
– At the 20-years jubilee-meeting of the EAC in Kassel (Germany) Horst Linke distributed greater quantities of offspring of a stock of P. spec. cf. linkei that he received from Pat Yap in 2011;
– The highly praised issue of the German-spoken journal “Amazonas” that was published April 2012 appeared recently in an American-english translation. The four articles by Hallmann, Linke, Kopic and Finke on licorice gouramis have been carefully translated and edited; accompanying articles on other subjects have been partly exchanged. The editor, James Lawrence, did quite a good job. He mentions sources of supply for these fish in the U.S. and in Britain, and also the website of our project and the future website of American’s ALFA
– www.anabantoid.org There have been new friends written to us already.
– Helene Schoubye has placed all these articles on the Project-homepage in the meantime in full length in English and German original design. We are grateful to her and to the editors and publishers.
To all the best, until the next newsletter, your steering group.
Responsible: Peter Finke (Bielefeld/Germany).
(We always are pleased to receive proposal for improvements of the newsletter. The translations were done with the help of machine translation; please excuse any linguistic mistakes).