P. gunawani collection locality

The finder of this species, Horst Linke, describes the habitat rather exactly as follows (I translate his words into English):

“The species lives in Danau Rasau (lake Rasau), a lakeformed widening feeding the great Sungai Batang Hari near Ratanpanjang, about 76 km northeast of Kota Jambi extending till Tanjung and from there in the Sugai Batang Hari about 15 km further until the Danau Rasau at Rantanpanjang is reached (Province Jambi, Sumatra, Indonesia).

It is an extreme blackwater peat lake (…); the pH measured was 4.1, electric conductivity 30 Microsiemens/cm, and temperature (water) 29,3 degrees Celsius. (…) The species lives together with Betta coccina, Trichogaster leeri, Trichogaster trichopterus (only a few), Belontia hasselti and Sphaerichthys osphromenoides (SIM, CHIANG, LINKE & LINKE 2007)”.

The species was correctly identified only once by the original import of Horst himself (of which I received some animals later on and bred them without problems), again a second time by a new import by Linke, and then never again. The scientific name was given not before 2012. All commmercial imports since that first one claiming to be P. gunawani have not been securely identified. There is a commercial interest by exporters and importers of rare fish species to give them interesting “new” names for the sake of selling them in a difficult market. Only once I saw a photo of them that could have been gunawani; but all others were deinitely other forms from Jambi. There are many bintan-like forms in that part of the island. So, it is highly probable that most of the forms sold bearing that name are (mistakenly or frankly) wrongly named.

Rod, most maps available are bad; such lakes are not named or even wrongly named. You are surely right in thinking that it is one of those.

And you are probably right guessing that your Parosphromenus spec. is one of those many slightly different variants of a bintan-type coming from Jambi/Sumatra.

The “Borneo Pisciculture”: I have just tried (14.08.2914) to scan the pictures at the site, but I did not see any species name (it was a facebook site; I could not find any free direct site). There are linkei and spec. Blue line and possibly others to be seen, but no fish that resembles the original P. gunawani that I had and have bred (Linke’s won picture ist to be seen at the species account in our website; it is a very good photo which shows the stoutness of the body and the colouring of edges of the unpaired fins quite nicely).

The photo is reproduced in the Finke/Hallmann 200-pages-book on Parosphromenus (“Prachtguramis”) containing many photos never shown before; some copies (not many) are still available.

No! This is typical behaviour of exporters who do not bother about identity very much and add confusing names rather freely to the list of official names.

There is P. gunawani, a not-well-known but well-described species, formerly known as P. spec. Danau Rasau. It’s a good species, the hitherto last one scientifically described. I received living specimen from the original collection by finder Horst Linke and bred them rather easily. It is well to be identified by a rather stout body and a special colouring of the edges of the unpaired fins of the males. It is known from one location in Sumatra only, the lake Danau Rasau. It was imported only twice by finder Horst Linke and since then possibly by commercial traders, but this remains unclear. The truth is that among the traded fish bearing this name were specimen which resembled the real gunawani very much, but they were mixed with others definitely not gunawani.

Then there is P. spec. “Blue line”, a hitherto undecribed species (or subspecies), bintan-like, with very brilliant iridiscent blue stripes, which was named “blue line” by the trade business for trade purposes. The fish appeared first in the pet shops in Europe via wholesaler Glaser (Germany) and were distributed in great quantities between 2005 and at least 2010, maybe even today, and subsequently in other countries Too (U.S.!). Its original locality is the district of Jambi on Sumatra (as it is the case with gunawani) but well separated from other forms. Nevertheless, there were often different forms traded bearing this name (for instance with very long or with very short ventrals). It is highly probable that they were mixed ba the catchers already when they left one locality to enlarge their catch at a second and third.

The “blue line”-fish are not safely distinguished from other undescribed forms from Sumatra, most of that have not been named by the trade and were freely mixed bearing this name or that. The fish mostly traded during the last years (from about 2009 till today) are the so called P. spec. Sentang (or “sintangensis”) which have less brilliant colours than the original blue-lines and are sometime referred to as the “Green speckled licorice gourami”. They come from Jambi too, but are not as clearly distinguished from other bintan-variants from Sumatra than gunawani or the original blue-lines.

To sum it up: The trade business is responsible for these mixtures and equivocations of names and fish, since they don’t bother about clearly separating the localities of the fish they trade. Their commercial interests are superior over the interests of distinction which should be from a scientific or preservational point of view. It’s a pity, but it’s reality. We cannot blame the catchers whose behaviour is the origin of these mixtures and failures, because they are paid cents only for a hundred or more fish. The true responsibility for the given confusion is by the export-companies, and – not to forget – the scientists of course, who have been unable to do enough research on Sumatra during the last twenty years in order to prevent such developments and get the relation between the forms and variants clear.

The newest development is what we learn here: that the trade confuses well-described P. gunawani and not-decribed spec. blue line. These two are definitely not identical. It is a superfluous confusion added to those that we have already. The reason is quite clear (becuse both forms are clearly and easily to be distinguished): to sell fish with the interesting new name “gunawani”. People want fish that are new to them, and “gunawani” is still new. I should not be astonished if the fish would be neither gunawani nor “blue line”.