Pictures of my Paros

Hi!
There is a lot to tell you, clearly. First of all, really cool you started keeping paros!
They are great fish to keep, but there are quite some downsides too.
I see you are keeping them with Tanichthys. Sorry to say, but those are probably the worst tankmates one could choose. They come from completely different habitat types and their requirements are alike. Parosphromenus come from highly acidic peat swamps, wile Tanichthys come from swiftly-flowing mountain streams and even survive winter here in the Netherlands. For the latter, this is not a big deal. They survive everything. Paros, on the other hand, definitely do not. They probably survive in your tank since you have two of the easier species(but they don’t get nearly as beautiful as when kept well!), but they will not proliferate. One should keep in mind all species of Parosphromenus are severely threatened by human activity. Therefore, emphasis should be on breeding them, not just keeping.

Astonishingly, they are able to get enough food in your tank with two of the most voracious species I know, namely Tanichthys and neon tetras. In most alike cases the paros die from starvation when kept with similar fish.

Especially P. filamentosus is not very hard to breed(for a Parosphromenus, that is) so I strongly recommend setting up a small breeding tank. 20 liters is sufficient. Use RO or rainwater and put in a lot of oak leaves and/or peat to get the pH down to 5 or so. Feed them a lot of live food and with some luck you’ll be able to get some youngs.

How many of both species do you have?

Bartan is completely right. It’s a very bad thing to establish a community tank for Paros. At least one shoukld select conveniant companios (as Boraras spec. for instance, but not Tanichthys, Catfish or even “Neons”. It’s of no use to do this “for the beginning” only. This is just the standard thinking for the standard type of aquarium with a thick layer of stony gravels in order to plant the usual plants. They will change the water values completely; you cannot estanblish a backwater aquarium for long with such a gravel and plants like Echinodorus spec. and Hygrophila difformis.
The second bad thing is to mix different species of Paros, because the females are very similar. In some cases you will be unable to keep them apart, and the males will possibly or probably also. Of course this is done by the normal petshops already. But the first mistakes happen there. We have several cases where they sold the wrong females, and now the aquarists complain about seeing no spawning or – worse – do see spawning but there are weak larvae developing from the eggs doomed to death.
It is wrong to think Paros to be very delicate and difficult. If given the right water with 10 to 60 Microsiemens/cm (I doubt that your RO-water is beyond 100, at least for long) and the fish are healthy you can establish a small tank with peat and beech leaves on the ground, wood from fresh peat-cuttings, a big Catappa-leaf at the back side, a little quantity of Javamoss, Ceratopteris at the water surface and – most important – one or two small caves with horizontal roof, and give the fish immediately in it. Normally I practise it like this and there are no losses. In cases I doubt it because of the condition of the fish I wait for three or four days using that fine Easy Life-milk from Zeolith first. That is undoubtedly a helpful invention but it’s the only thing that I still buy at the Zoo-shops.
The whole aquarium literature and trade is completely fixed on the normally structured medium big or big tank with all the things the industry want to sell in the meantime. There is nearly no explanation of the different type that a blackwater tank must be. Besides, the water must not be dark or “black”. It must contain humic substances but mostly it can well be clear, perhaps a little yellowish or slightly tea-coloured.