P. gunawani

Of course there are photos. You cannot decribe a new species nowadays without including photos. One is shown in our species description. It was taken of the specimens which were brought to Europe by its discoverers, and it is shown in the scientifis species descrition by Linke and Schindler, too.

I had my P. gunawani from this small stock of animals wild-caught by my friend Horst Linke at the original location, and bred them without any difficulties. But then, things happened that often happen: I gave them away and the parent fish and their offspring were lost completely by the new owners.

This photo and othere photos (including a female, a freshly caught individual and photos of the original places and catching situations) ate to be found an pages 415-417 of Linke’s “Labyrinth fish world”.

All other photos which I have seen in the net proclaiming to be “gunawani” are definitely or most probably not that species. The trade likes to sell “new species”, it’s a marketing gag. But since there are good photos of the original individuals, one can easily tell those to be wrongly named.

Yes, we have comparatively little information about this species, but mind that it was discovered some years ago only. OK, it was once found (ca. 1990) and privately imported before already, as “P. spec. Jambi”, but then the few fishes were seen by a few people only. Some years after a second form from Jambi was found (ca. 1994) and named P. spec. Jambi II”. That was all. There was never a commercial import, both forms died out soon after those small private imports of a few specimens only, and they were forgotten. This was quite a normal thing at that times, because we had only a few enthusiasts in Germany and Japan, and Sumatra was rarely visited by them at the end of the 20th century. The Germans preferred West-Malaysia, and the Japanese Borneo.

Only in 2008 Horst Linke decided to travel Sumatra extensively, and within two years and three journeys he found at least seven places that nobody of the Paro-scene had visited before (in search for Paros), and he forund new forms that nobody had seen before (as the now-called P. phoenicurus, for instance). And he rediscovered the place of P. spec. Jambi I and P. spec. Jambi II. The first one produced the first Jambi-fish we have had once before in 1990, and he called it with a better provisional name: P. spec. Danau Rasau. The second produced the second Jambi-fish from ca. 1994, and was now more exactly called P. spec. Sungai Bertam.

But he brought only a few fish home, and I recieved some of the first of the two, spec. Danau Rasau, and bred them. A very nice bintan-like fish, but with a stouter body, rather big and a bit more colourful, with a nice reddish-brown border at the edge of the dorsal. The sad rest I have told in that other mailing.
When the fish were gone again, Linke travelled in 2011 once more Jambi/Sumatra, but managed only to catch three spec. Danau Rasau, all proving to be females.

That is it up to now. I think that the fish traded as “P. gunawani” a wrongly named; it is not the first time that the exporters try to sell their fish by using a new name that sounds more interesting than “bintan” or “deissneri”. The scientific decription published in 2012 by Linke and Schindler rested on that privately collected material. (One cannot base a scientific description of an new Paro on trade fish). I think that it is a sound description, but the fish was probably never after imported by trade. Although the commercial fish-seekers have discovered Sumatra in the meantime (partly because of the big destructions in Western Malaysia and Kalimantan, resulting in fewer and smaller catching grounds), they concentrated fully on P. spec. “blue line” (especially 2005 – 2008) and afterwards P. spec. Sentang (“sintangensis”, 2008 up to now). The reason is quantity.

With the exception of P.phoenicurus which was traded last year for the first time commercially (why? because of its nice red colours!) all the other Sumatranian forms occur at limited small locations only and species were never (P. gunawani, P. spec. Dua) or rarely (P. sumatranus, the most interesting!) traded. That is all. In my opinion the species is not present in any tank now. Some think to have them, but they are victims of the trade’s usages. (I cannot prove this, but it seems most likely to me).

But this makes Paro-aquaristics interesting and suspensive up to the present day.