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I could not resist ordering another species of paro from our friends at Wetspot. I received 2.3 P. nagyi about two weeks ago and have been reducing water values, which now stand at conductivity 140µS, pH 6.0. These will continued to be lowered to better ranges each day.
Now for some photos of this interesting form..
Day One –
Male, just after release into aquarium.
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/913/5DCqns.jpg[/IMG]One hour later.
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/537/jo50f2.jpg[/IMG]Color change of same male several hours later.
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/633/dkMLd5.jpg[/IMG]Female – the unpaired fins appear larger and more ‘sail-like’ than the sp. palangan I have.
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/913/sMQXAn.jpg[/IMG][IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/661/1KBaO5.jpg[/IMG]
Day Three-
The male has begun to color up – looks similar to the ‘Kuantan’ form? – caudal metallic band is gold, not blue..
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/537/Bb8d6t.jpg[/IMG]Very pretty colors in the male..
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/633/aErgi1.jpg[/IMG]Day Four-
I separated this pair into their own space and an amazing transformation began to take place in the male – he becomes much more colorful!
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/910/1p8pfC.jpg[/IMG]Quite a bit of metallic green around the gill covers…and very “strawberry” colored.
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/910/G99TcE.jpg[/IMG]Day Five-
I cannot believe how colorful the male is turning out!
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/540/H3kEns.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/633/aemAsr.jpg[/IMG]Now the male has ‘sexy-eyes’ – the female, not yet…but they are a harmonious pair, it seems..
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/537/nMks0L.jpg[/IMG]Day 7-
Now both male and female have ‘sexy-eyes’ and the female has become very pale colored – are they going to spawn?
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/912/6ray9D.jpg[/IMG]The displays begin! The colors of the male are fantastic..
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/905/QwvnPP.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/901/zhCxiF.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/633/ZcqKxY.jpg[/IMG]So here is something interesting: the literature states that P. nagyi has a head-down display mode, and there is the classic image by Martin Hallmann showing a male in head-down display. We would expect, then, this form of P. nagyi to have the same display mode and look as follows while displaying…but, in the image below, he is not displaying, only feeding from the substrate..
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/673/6qDJQU.jpg[/IMG]This male does not display in ‘head-down’ mode. He approaches the female from below, keeps his body mostly horizontal, rotates himself 45 to 90 degrees on his spinal axis, so his body is ‘pancake-like’ flat, and then pushes upward to the female positioned above him, reflecting light from above to her as he does so…
Image taken from a video of the male in display mode (colors in male finnage look different under fluorescent lighting!)
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/537/6TqEjO.jpg[/IMG]This is not ‘head-down’ display…only the female above looks down at displaying male.
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/537/QnTtUm.png[/IMG]This is consistent in intense displays..
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/912/84Xlih.png[/IMG]Only occasionally will the male display horizontally without the body rotation along the axis, but never in head-down position.
Here, again, is the male with horizontal and rotated body angle in display. According to the excellent article by Martin Hallmann in Amazonas Magazine, the display form of this male P. nagyi is exactly the display mode characteristic of P. quindecim! So what is going on? I have another smaller male that has yet to fully mature, when he does, we’ll see if he displays in this odd fashion or in the standard way characteristic of P. nagyi.
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/538/KPsSXS.jpg[/IMG]Day 10 –
I added a film canister and within 12 hours the male had adopted it as his new nesting place…so far no spawning or eggs, but this looks good..
[IMG]http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/xq90/540/kbjhfW.jpg[/IMG]Thanks for looking and any comments welcomed. I feel very lucky to have gotten these paros from the folks at Wetspot, and because of the suggestions and support from the paro friends here, there may be a successful spawning of these amazing animals soon. To Bill and any other American paro keepers, I think Wetspot has a few of these left in stock..
Here a video with footage of the displaying male. Enjoy. (Some of the segments are in slow motion).
David — again another wonderful set of photos. I wish you success with this spawn and hope to see some fry in the coming weeks. It’s interesting the most recent weekly listing from WetSpot (Friday) showed no “Paros” on the list. Keep all of us posted
Bill, thanks, and I thought they had a listing for the Nagyi just the other day on Aquabid, but I don’t see it any more. I think they must be down to no paros – so hopefully will bring some more in. Will keep a posting here if any spawning is observed.
Fantastic photos 🙂
You asked a question about it being ‘kuantan’. Looking at the last photos this question seems to answer itself by a ‘no’. The band looks very blue to me, which would indicate it not being the ‘kuantan’ form, but rather ‘cherating’ form.The observatons about the flashing is interesting – I never thought about it, but I do think I would recognise this kind of flashing with some of mine as well. I dont know so much about this, – except that I do know that some species have the head down display, – others more just ‘side-display’, – but its true, your male is very much ‘underneath-display’..
Interesting to learn more about that hopefullyHello everyone,
Awesome pictures indeed. 🙂 As for the display, my bintan males for example usually start with by the book head down position but then they twist just anyhow to show themselves in front of the female. It seems to me that it is very dependent on where most of the light comes from and they twist in a such a way that they could use the light when the female is changing position or direction versus them. Even the head down position is always deflected couple degrees from the females position more or less so that the colors are reflected from the best angle. At least it seems to be that way.
Yes, Helene, I have watched your video of your displaying nagyi and was completely taken with the beauty of them – it was that video that really made me see the beauty of the paros! And, the images I posted from the video (daylight fluorescent lighting from above) show the fins as much more solid blue. It does appear that the light source and angle of lighting can render the metallic bands to slightly different colors as shown in some of the other photos taken with the camera – sometimes golden bronze, sometimes lime green – but overall the fins do appear to be blue-green. I include another video (see below) with both daylight overhead lighting and a halogen light into the front of the tank to give a mix of cool and warm lighting and the colors can be seen from differing angles as well. If I have lucked out by getting ‘Cherating’ then ~ 🙂 These really are such fascinating animals.
Thanks, Pavel, i’m sure the bintan are quite stunning when displaying 🙂 And yes, it does look as if the males angle themselves differently to maximize the lighting and coloration of their fins – and that is really fascinating. It’s just I was expecting to see the classic head-down display of the nagyi and was surprised to see this very interesting variation of it. This is all new to me, so I’m learning with your help.
Here is one more video of the displaying pair – their colors can be observed – with overhead daylight fluorescent lighting and halogen lighting into the front glass. Still not too brightly lit, and these paros do not seem to mind.
The question which form your nagyi are is easily to be answered as “not Kuantan” if the coloured band in the tail is correctly shown as to be not a pure white. On the other hand, in other photos there are the prolonged spines that extend over the edges of the fins (especially the tail) clearly to be seen; a feature not to be found in the Cherating-form. Nevertheless, these two forms do not indicate the full range of nagy-forms.
The solution is that there are more intermediate forms than those two. We had, some years ago, for instance an intermediate form caught by Allan Brown. In the years from 2010 most nagyi that came by the trade were called “Pekan Nenas”, and did more resemble the classical Kuantan than the rather isolated Cherating. The home range of nagyi near the eastern coast of the Malayan peninsula is quite extended, and near the northern and southern end they differ clearly. But there are intermediate forms indicating that these are not different species but variants of one species only.
We are by far not fully informed about that variety. The scientific description is fully based on the Kuantan form; it is valid but not very elaborated. My friend Dietrich Schaller (the author) wrote it many years ago not knowing about that variety. Hallmann was the first who caught the Cherating form and rightly called it “Cherating”, but in the meantime other intermediate forms have come to our knowledge.
Before naming or even defining new forms we should exclude two sources of failures that are very often made today: different age and mood of our fish and the changing impact of the art of photography, light, and the technical differences that belong to cameras and the equipment, including the subjectivity of the displays of our computers. It is very obvious that the first is involved in this case, too, as you compare the first pictures and the last. Not seeing the living fish one is incapable to exclude the second type of possible failures.
My advice is to see our Paros as a wonderful example of open questions: Science far away from final truth, and the hobby as its necessary supplement in a continuing process. Most aquarium fish do not expose such an openness; they swim around and enjoy their possessors until they die or (mostly) are exchanged against new species. We are more deeply interested in fish that still pose riddles and unsolved problems, in some cases of species identification, in others (as here) in the identification of forms hitherto named, but not as the end of the descriptive pipe, but as its beginning only.
Peter, you have summed up the situation nicely, thank you. More on this later…
For now, the P. nagyi have spawned today – the situation less than ideal with conductivity at ~100µS and pH of 5.9. However the eggs appear to have all stuck within the bubble nest/cave ceiling, so that is something of a relief.
Should I attempt to lower the conductivity over the next few days? Or just leave it as is and hope for the best?
Should I remove the female to another tank? Or leave her in and see what happens – I think I can net her out, if need be, fairly easily, as she prefers to hang out right at the front of the tank. Advice appreciated.Here is a video combining about 4-5 hours of activity into 15 minutes. There is a lot of movement and the camera work is not so smooth…I post it for learning purposes so new paro keepers have some idea of how a spawning sequence may go in general terms, each species a specific case of course. I was not expecting this so soon, and I have to say it is quite an amazing aquaristic scene to observe. These really are cool animals!
Thanks again to everyone for suggestions and info.David, you should try to reduce the conductivity at least to half of this, doing it in several steps over three or four days. P. nagyi is not the most delicate of all licorice gouramies but we never encountered a habitat with water as hard as this.
Leave the female in if there is a good layer of leaves on the bottom and many other hiding places for the larvae (swimming plants, java moss etc.); if not you should take her out. If fed properly the females often don’t harm their offspring, but nevertheless some do actively. If you are lucky it’s more easy to let the young grow up in company with their parents: for instance, feed freshly hatched Artemia and both are satisfied. But if you are anxious, take her out. If you leave her in, you will soon see the next spawning, and so on. I should leave her, but look intensively how she behaves. If she is doing something what you dislike, you can take her out.
I yesterday phoned with friend Horst Linke. He will show us a professional video of a Parosphromenus-spawning at our first international meeting in Hamburg in September. Nice to see yours.
I’ll add some more leaves and cover for any fry that may hatch out, leave the female in and lower the conductivity with successive water changes with RO treated with humic substances over the next few days to 50µS. If this current clutch of eggs makes it great, if not, there will be proper conditions for any subsequent spawns.
To create paro suitable water for water changes, I have been using an internal filter filled with a mixture of organic acidic materials placed in a separate container to treat RO water + a slight amount of tap water to facilitate ion exchange. It works much better than the ‘boiling of materials to make a tea which is added to water’ method. This new method results in a quick reduction of acidity to about pH 5.0 and only a mild tingeing of the water – some humic substances, but not so much that the fish become unobservable – thank you Bernd and Pavel for the water treatment recommendations 🙂 .
Nice, hope it works out with the offspring, do you have enough food for the small ?. They are really very small and need in the first days much fodder otherwise starve them and there are only a few left
I’ve got microworms on order and cultivating some micro-organisms now – probably some kind of rotifer – which make good microfood for newly hatched fry. Thanks for the reminder! I find the oak leaves (added a bunch more to the tank, with a thin layer of shredded peat fibers as well) generate a lot of micro-organisms as well.
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