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Hello all,
Since a few months I keep a small group of 5 Parosphromenus sp.
At first I kept them in my 100 liter community tank, they where OK in there but I had to overfeed to make sure they would get enough food. Not an ideal situation and no chance of offspring. Therefore I set up a small 10 liter tank for one pair.
as floating plant I used lemna, but somehow I can never keep it alive. so I added twigs in the upper part of the aquarium.the water chemistry: (as far as I can measure it)
pH 5.93
KH <0,25
GH <0,25
Temp 23 C
should I lower the pH? and how fast?
how much should I give the couple to eat? they usually get white worms, because that is the easiest available now.Teunis.
Try glass worms. They eat it gladly, and the food can live for a day with Your fish. I feed my paros every second day, becouse there are always some uneaten larvae.
With white worms it’s better to underfeed slightly, than overfeed, since the overdose will die and decompose.The pH will go down with time, all You need to do is let the leaves rot.
Do You have some kind of filtration? You probably are unable to have any Lemna, becouse of biofilm on the water. There are small filtres with skimmer, it might solve the problem.
Beautifull C. vendtii on the first photo. It’s a shame they haven’t found their way into this tank. They would make an ideal cover.
thnx for your reply,
I’ll order some glassworm.
The pH would go down if I wouldn’t do a water change twice a week. I use oak extract to lower the pH.
The Cryptocoryne is C cordata var. blassi, its to big voor the small tank, and I did not use sand or gravel on the bottom of the tank. besides a pH below 6 isn’t suitable for most plants.
I have a pH between 5,0 and 5,5 – and Microsorium, Riccia, Ceratophyllum, Lomariopsis, Fontinalis, Ceratopteris and Cryptocoryne lutea and undulata are doing quite well …. which looks like this:
[quote=”Teunis” post=2093]
[/quote]Hi, Teunis,
I think it is Pangio I see besides you paros in this community tank. As far as I know Pangio doesn’t like pebbly ground with gravel and stones – they like soft ground, fine sand, mud and leaf litter to root around …….. And they like soft, acidic water too (not to the extent that paros prefer, but nonetheless) – and in my experience such stones as I see in your tank harden the water ………
In my opinion the tank shown on your first photo is neither suitable for paros nor for loaches………Sorry, I should have made myself more clear. :blush:
There are many hardy plants that grow under various conditions. Also in nature some plants grow in acidic conditions, as shown by this link. So its definitely possible to grow plants in water whit a low pH. However for most (sub)tropical aquariumplants the ideal pH is somewhere between 6 and 7. below pH 6 plants usually grow significantly worse. Lack of light, tannic acids and tannins make blackwater also less suitable for plants.
for example this is Microsorum trident in the planted community tank (pH 6.5);
the same plants are growing in the 10liter tank, but those are coming from a tank with pH 5.0.
since C. cordata is quite a hard to find plant here I prefer to keep it under the best conditions I can offer. As a result it started to bloom B) :
Stefanie, the Pangio semicincta is like Houdini. I kept them in this tank until I changed the substrate. Their caudal fins where occasionally nipped by the red tail puffers so they should be moved anyway. somehow this little fellow stayed hidden in a completely emptied tank, and every time I tried to catch him, he disappeared. Until I cleaned out the filter last week and I found him, apparently he could not only get in there but also out again… :huh:
back ontopic,
I was ordering some glass worms, and came up whit some questions.
what kind of filter do you use? I came across some small air driven sponge filters. would they be useful?
now I don’t use any filter but change 50% of the water twice a week.Would vinegar eels be eaten (by fry)? I used those in the past to feed fry of Pseudomugil en Oryzias which stay close to the surface just like the eels. But I think Paro fry stays closer to the bottom of the tank?
I don’t know if Aquael PATmini is availible in Your country, but in my opinion it is a good filter for small aquarium. Highly adjustable flow rate is nice, and the filter itself is very,very small. In my opinion using air powered filter is good, when You have many tanks on a shelf, since the power input will be small as opposed to electric turbines, but the air pumps are noisy, even when producer says they should be silent.
I would propose two Aquael filters:
FAN MIKRO Plus – [X}
PAT MINI – [X]In Poland PAT MINI costs about 6 Euros.
[quote=”Teunis” post=2112] I was ordering some glass worms, and came up whit some questions… [/quote]
Glass worms (Chaoborus or Chorethra, “weiße Mückenlarven”) are a very good food for bigger grown and adult Paros. Fed by them, they reliably get fertile (which often could be a problem, especially if fed by Daphnia).
But I should point out that two good German breeders during the last years had severe problems with glassworms from the trade. One of them lost his complete stocks of more than ten species of Paros and many growing offspring. Among them were extremely valuable fish that he had caught himself at the original sites, so surely been determined as the species known from there. The other friend lost the majority of his whole stock and offspring. There are indications that much more people made that experience but up to the present day do not realize what happens, what the cause has been.
And what was the cause of that losses? Quite clearly and without any doubt a contamination of the commercially harvested and stored glassworms; in both cases there was a definite proof of this. One should especially be warned against those small plastic envelopes which are sold in thousands with mostly an unclear origin. The glassworms inside obviously are treated by a heavy poison to make them more stabile in that small containers. Often some die and to prevent the others from being infected those poisons are used. Often this works well, as it seems, but there can be most catastrophic results for the fish fed by them. At any rate if you cannot catch your glassworms yourself from the next fish-free pool (what is best) you should keep them for quite a time in a big container with much new water; best is to net them and give them without old polluted water into it.
Peter Finke
[quote=”parosphr” post=2114] At any rate if you cannot catch your glassworms yourself from the next fish-free pool (what is best) you should keep them for quite a time in a big container with much new water; best is to net them and give them without old polluted water into it.[/quote]
Hello, Peter,
yes, that is completely right: I would recommend this for every kind of life food bought from the trade.
In winter I also have to buy the glass worms – and I pour them as soon as possible after buying out of their plastic bags, into a sieve, which I then hang into a pot with clear, fresh water. You can say – I wash them first, to rinse off every trace of the fluid in which they are sold. After that I wash the whole lot of larvae out of the sieve into – again – new clear, fresh water, put it all in a glass and store it in the fridge. You can feed the glass worms now and then with freshly hatched artemia.
Before feeding them to my fish I again pour them into a sieve and rinse them. I put nothing of the water I store them in into my tanks (although this is fresh water, which I fill up regularly).I do this washing with every kind of life food I have to buy – in Artemia it is additionally necessary because of the salt water they are sold in.
Until now I have made no bad experiences with feeding these glass worms to all of my fish – not only paros. But I am always afraid – I heard about this desaster you spoke about, too.
Hello Peter and Stefanie,
The glass worm are sold in a wet newspaper, its quite a large quantity (100grams of worms), so I throw them in a bucket rainwater and keep them outside. I order them from a killifish breeder who made a small business out of selling fish, eggs and supplies.I could ask him about the origin, but so far I never had problems whit those.
I never use the normal plastic bags of life food, and reading all this makes me sure to keep it that way.
Most time of the year I can catch enough food whit all the ditches in the area. somehow I never catch a lot of glass worms despite massive amounts of Daphnia and Cyclops.@ Sverting,thnx! They look nice indeed, I’ll see if I can find them.
I’m on my way to pick up a group parosphromenus. 🙂 they are sold as P ornaticauda so I am wondering what they look like. I should immediately be able to see if they are P ornaticauda, right? I hope to post some photos of the fish in their new home tonight.
Hello all,
unfortunately taking pictures is for me nearly impossible, because of a lack of skill, equipment, and light in the tank. 🙁 they are cute but small (12 -18 mm SL), so no breeding for them this summer I think.
at the IGL meeting I bought a pair P. quindecim and a pair P pahuensis. Truly lovely fish 🙂 which made me think; isn’t it a waste to keep them hidden in small breeding tanks, where I only look at them 3-4 times a week to make sure that they are okay… wouldn’t it be much nicer to be able to see them all day swimming around in the living room tank….
breeding, or at least surviving fry, is impossible. but I could put a pair in a breeding tank whenever I want. It might even be better not to breed them all the time, but give them a period of rest. :dry:
They would share a 80cm tank whit 12 Trigonistigma hengeli, 6 Hyalobagrus flavus, and 3 Caridina multidenta.
what do you think of it? and which species would you put in there? P cf Bintan(5), P pahuensis (1/1), P quidecim (1/1) or/and P ornaticauda (9)
I have mine in 70l tank, and they can show rasboras where they belong: away. Paros are predators, and they’re built for survival of the fittest. They can be quick, they can even be fierce as compared to the opinion about them. I’ve seen my Paros taking on a whole shoal of Boraras maculatus, to get the glassworm he wanted, even though there were some other larvaes closer to him.
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