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I got some paros from my LFS which at first apeared a bintan-variant. A few minutes ago I caught two males displaying, and they clearly have a brown band in the unpaired fins. In normal colouration they have the normal brilliant blue line, but this disappears when displaying. They have a round caudal fin, so no sp. Ampah. The only species I found with brown fins is P. allani. How likely is it to find this species in normal trade? Which other species could it be?
I currently have three males and one female but I could get some more. I tried to make a photograph but when I got a perfect shot the battery ran out of power. It’s recharging now, hope to get some pics soon.
Some questions and remarks:
1. Who or what is “LFS”?
2. It is very unusual that a blue band in the unpaired fins disappears altogether when displaying. Is this observation allright? I doubt it because you describe two males in an aggressive mood, not courtship.
3. This is the next point: Your fish show an aggressive colouring which is different from that of courtship. P. spec. Ampah show this strong brownish-blackish lines in the caudal, dorsal and the anal fins in aggressive situations, males and females. The latter in dorsal and anal only. But all Ampah lack blue bands at all!
4. Only a few of the Ampah-males show filaments, and they are mostly short. The caudals of some appear nearly (but not fully) rounded. At least in the males those blackish streaks must be visible.
5. P. allani is quite improbable, one could exclude that. This species is isolatedly living in Sarawak, and there is no one commercially catching Paros. Your description don’t fit to that species, either. It was never imported commercially so far. Besides, it does not show “brown fins”. The dorsal shows much red (and often a big black rounded spot), the anal much blue, and both have broad black lines at the edges.
6. Let us wait for good photos, but it could well be the case that you observed two aggressive aff. bintan-males.
7. But tell us how the dealer of the fish houses them: Are there several species obviously mixed in one tank, so that it would be easy to catch different species out? (Of course, mostly the mixing is not obvious, but factually that is possible). Are there spec. Ampah in that tank, too? Are there other companion-fish? Are there possibilities to hide?I am sure about my description. Never seen a paro like this. There is a clear brown band in the fins, which is very indistinct when in normal colouration. Then there is a small blue shiny band. Caudal fin is round, no filament, it´s not even conical. They don´t look like the sp. Ampah Martin Hallman put two pics of on the IGL forum. I have two bintan-like forms, but this new one doesn’t look like it at all when displaying.
Mind I only saw them displaying for a few seconds, in a series of a minute or so. Also, it may of course be they are still young and still have to develop adult colouration.
I have a small acidic breeding tank for them which only stands for a week now, I will wait two more weeks before putting in paros. Then I hope to see courtship colouration.
I have read several times mention of the IGL forum. How do I access that? Is there an English equivalent or is it in German? I would like to see the pictures of the sp. Ampah.
Also, I should add that 2 of my 3 male Sp. Ampah have filaments extending about 2.0 mm from their caudal fins. The third looks like it may still grow in; for some reason their fins were terribly damaged when I bought them.
Ryan
Look at http://joomla.igl-home.de/
To access the forum, you must follow the instructions there.
The IGl is a german association, the oldest in germany for labyrinth-fish. There is a working group on Parosphromenus that was founded by me eight years ago. But despite its name the IGL is not fully international. The IGL-homepage is completely in German, the Forum speaks German, too. The journal, “Der Makropode”, ist published in German only. Present president is Auke de Jong.
This monolingual activity was one of the reasons to establish the Parosphromenus-project as a world-wide network with an English-spoken forum and a homepage completely in three languages.
Nevertheless, many good specialists of licorice gouramies are members of the IGL. – There is a second association on labyrinth fish in Germany which is partially speaking English, too. It’s the EAC(AKL). It’s journal, the “Betta News”, is published bilingual, all articles are to be read in German and in English. Present president is Horst Linke.
Both associations are members of the Parosphromenus-project network, as are the other important associations in Europe (as e.g. the British AAGB or the French CIL).
It is also permitted to write in english at the IGL, so if you want to post something it’s fine when you do it in english. Auke de Jong is Dutch and there are several Dutch(including me) and French members, so not only German. For making it more international it’s good to join anyway.
I have to add something about my paros: in the dominant male the black lines sometimes fade away, making it light brown, like in nagyi but lighter. Didn’t manage to make good pics, I will try some more when I have time.
If allani is impossible I think they are sp. Ampah, despite the round caudal.I just looked at the species page of P. gunawani and realised they look quite similar to my fish. Is this possible? P. gunawani comes from Jambi, im I right? In that case it seems possible…
Possible it is, but not very likely. There are at least eight rather similar forms that we know from Jambi/Sumatra. Three of these have been imported in recent years, five not. And it is highly improbable that it’s gunawani. We only have one small stock of it in Europe.
Typical for gunawani is the multicoloured band at the edges of the unpaired fins, and its rather stout, robust body (in adult animals).But if it is gunawani, then you are lucky and you must breed it; for the small stock in Horst Linke’s tank consists of females only!
I finally got the dominant male displaying to a mirror. I tried very hard but it appears impossible to photograph. I will try to draw what I saw.
EDIT:
I put it on a green background to make translucence visible. The parts of the fins with some faint green in it are translucent. The borders between colours are all very faint but that was really hard to draw. This is just to give an idea of the colours that are in it. In fact, there are no distinct colour bands except the blue ones. The others are more vague without clear separation between each other. The white/blue band in the caudal is also slightly translucent.
This looks like a bintan variant. I have two other bintan-like forms(Sentang and an unknown one) which look different from this one in reality.
Dear Bartian, don’t be annoyed by my answer but it is really impossible to identify a bintan-variant by such descriptions and drawings. It would be of much more help if you could say some words about where or whom did you get the fish from, and any additional information you could squeeze out of this person or trader regarding the question whom or where he did get these fish from.
Otherwise we all must wait. Wait for good (!) photos.I found a trick to making photographing them displaying possible. I put a black carton cylinder around the lens and glued on a glass plate. They now see their reflection and the camera sees them. This way they display to the lens.
Battery wasn’t helping and quickly went dead, so very few pics. I made some more but those were not sharp enough. This is all the same fish. Note the variating distal caudal band colour.
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img839/627/p1060580d.jpg[/IMG]
Not sharp, but you can clearly see the translucent band in the caudal fin.
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img221/9756/p1060577m.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img708/1456/p1060575d.jpg[/IMG]More pics incoming when battery is recharged. For compensation some other paro pics:
Some baby bintan “Sentang”
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img836/6672/p1060584n.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img841/974/p1060572n.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img594/3892/p1060586v.jpg[/IMG]
P. quindecim(the right one is a female):
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img441/5368/p1060581gn.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imageshack.us/a/img6/1093/p1060573ig.jpg[/IMG]Hi Bartian.
Your exercise with the camera sounds interesting 🙂 … at one point I had a flash light glued to my camera 🙂 .. It looked a bit weird, but any trick goes.I like your photoes, – the ones of the little one is really good.
I have to say, I would really think those quindecims are two males. I know the female quindecim shows some pattern and some colours, but mine usually looks like this https://parosphromenus-project.org/en/quindecim.html (last two images ) .. infact those are mine 🙂Thanks 🙂
I am quite sure it is a female. She only gets this colour when courting. and it is less intense in reality. The flash makes everything shiny 😛 .She also gets the gender-typical pale colouration. Her fins are somewhat shorter than and different from the “real male’s”. Also, I saw them performing “fake spawning”, so to say.
I got them from Thorsten Kolb at the IGL. He breeds a lot of paro’s, he should know how to sex them.
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