Our Team

The Parosphromenus Project is a team­work between many indi­vid­u­als all over the world, — of ded­i­cated peo­ple who con­tribute in many ways, — as breed­ers, as researchers, as hob­by­ists, as sci­en­tists, as sup­port­ers. The Project would not excist with­out our many mem­bers and active people.

But to keep this together, coor­di­nate, inspire and con­tin­u­ally search for progress, a smaller group of ded­i­cated peo­ple have been con­tin­u­ally tak­ing on respon­si­bil­i­ties within the Project in our Steer­ing Group, and we would like to intro­duce our­selves on this page.

The Parosphromenus Project Novem­ber 2019

	Founder and ide­o­log­i­cal leader Proff. Dr. Peter Finke, Germany
	Benjamin Wilden, Ger­many, Project Manager My name is Ben­jamin, but I am known as Ben­nie in all fish-​related mat­ters. I am a Ph.D. stu­dent in ani­mal ecol­ogy at Biele­feld Uni­ver­sity (Ger­many) and work on ancient lakes around the globe. Fishes were always my favorite ani­mals. There­fore, I started fish­keep­ing as a hobby at age 11 and was a mem­ber of the Parosphromenus-​Project from the very start. In the project I pre­vi­ously worked as address coor­di­na­tor and cen­sus asses­sor. In 2014 I trav­eled to Malaysia, Sin­ga­pore, and Suma­tra to explore Parosphromenus habi­tats. As a Project Man­ager, I am respon­si­ble for the strat­egy and tac­tics of the Parosphromenus-​Project.
	Helene Schoubye Johansen, Den­mark, Project man­ager and webmaster My aquatic inter­est started about 20 years ago, and after about 5 years or so I almost exclu­sively had Parosprhome­nus. I was fasi­nated by their beauty and intriged by the level of skills needed, — and I was also slowly learn­ing about their need for pro­tec­tion in nature, — in par­tic­u­lar through Prof. Dr. Peter Finke, who reached out for all that showed an inter­est in Paros. I got to know Peter Finke very well, and over some years we worked very closely together to estab­lish the home­page, as well as build­ing the struc­ture of the Inter­na­tional meet­ings, the newslet­ters etc. Today I work together with Ben­nie in the day to day man­age­ment, as Project man­ager. My respon­si­bilty is every­thing con­cern­ing the home­page, face­book and twit­ter, as well as the newslet­ter and mem­ber­ship data­bases, — but it extends into many other activ­i­ties and deci­sions, such as coop­er­a­tions with Zoo’s and organisations.
	Went­ian Shi, China/​Germany, Nat­u­ral­ist, Field leader I have in the recent years been actively involved in the field research of the Genus Parosphromenus and other labyrinth fish and sym­bi­otic species from Indone­sia and Malaysia. In the past 4 years, I have checked almost all the habi­tats of the 20 sci­en­tif­i­cally described species and explored many other unde­scribed new species and local types with the help of my team­mates (S.J.D. Team). A lot of long con­sid­ered lost species and types have been redis­cov­ered due to these efforts. One of the most impor­tant achieve­ments is the redis­cov­ery of the type species of genus Parosphromenus, P. deiss­neri, in 2017 after all known habi­tats are destroyed by human activities. Now, besides the aca­d­e­mic works, as an offi­cial col­lab­o­ra­tor of the Research Cen­ter for Biol­ogy of the Indone­sia Acad­emy of Sci­ence, I also con­tribute myself to the con­ser­va­tion projects of the habi­tats of these species as the Field­work Leader of the Parosphromenus-​Project by using my field knowl­edges and local social network.
	Rafael Eggli, Basel, Switzer­land, Respon­si­bel for Census I cur­rently pur­sue a Master’s degree in Nanophysics at Uni­ver­sity of Basel. My inter­est in fish­keep­ing sparked in my child­hood. Read­ing about the Parosphromenus-​Project in the ger­man jour­nal DATZ had me fas­ci­nated by those beau­ti­ful yet highly endan­gered jew­els of the rain­for­est. How­ever, it took sev­eral years before my first encounter with liv­ing Parosphromenus linkei, the first species I kept and bred. As part of my grad­u­a­tion from high­school, I analysed the progress of the project, its pur­pose and chances of suc­cess and wrote a small study on my find­ings. It was an inte­gral part of this effort to quan­tify the projects achieve­ments by review­ing and ana­lyz­ing his­tor­i­cal data from the half yearly cen­sus. Join­ing the first inter­na­tional meet­ing in Ham­burg in 2015, I met Peter Finke and was intro­duced to the main part of the steer­ing group. After DATZ pub­lished my find­ings, I con­tin­ued to analyse the cen­sus and was asked by Peter to join the steer­ing group. Cur­rently only keep­ing Parosphromenus parvu­lus, I am respon­si­ble for orga­niz­ing and assem­bling the cen­sus in order to mon­i­tor the Parosphromenus-​population kept by mem­bers of the Project around the world.
	Dorothee Jöllenbeck-​Pfeffel, Ger­many, Translating My Name is Dorothee, I live in the south of Ger­many, near Freiburg. I work as a teacher for paint­ing, draw­ing, sculp­ture, archi­tec­ture and art his­tory at school. Even early in my life I had been fas­ci­nated by good worked aquar­ium tanks with healthy inhab­i­tants, and for 10 years now I have my own tanks. When I started, it was impos­si­ble to get dif­fer­en­ti­ated infor­ma­tion about the required hous­ing con­di­tions of dif­fer­ent fish and other fresh­wa­ter species, for exam­ple we had then the first hype about tylome­la­nia snails from Sulawesi. Often just “I take tap water”.Looking for cor­rect water and tem­per­a­ture para­me­ters for choco­late guramis, I found the home­page of the Parosphromenus Project. Here I found the dif­fer­en­ti­ated and proven para­me­ters for black water species I had looked for. Shortly after I was able to bring my first Parosphromenus linkei on the return trip from a North Sea vaca­tion. The off­spring of these are still swim­ming around in one of my aquariums.

HUS­BANDRY GUIDE­LINE — PROJECT

The Parosphromenus Project is help­ing Chester Zoo cre­ate Hus­bandry Guide­lines for BIAZA (British and Irish Assosi­a­tion of Zoos and Aquar­i­ums) and EAZA (Euro­pean Asso­ci­a­tion of Zoos and Aquaria)

In order for dif­fer­ent Zoos in Europe to be able to main­tain and keep pop­u­la­tions of Paros, it is essen­tial that guide­lines for best Hus­bandry Prac­tise is created.

This is not just describ­tions of expe­ri­ences, or guide­lines, this is at best a col­lec­tion of pre­cise data and infor­ma­tion, gath­ered over a period.

Andrea Swat­man is the respon­si­ble per­son at Chester Zoo ini­ti­at­ing this, and the work began already in Sep­tem­ber 2019, at the Inter­na­tional Meet­ing in Chester.

As a begin­ning, — a lot of writ­ten mate­r­ial has been given on from the Parosphromenus Project, — describ­tions of our known expe­ri­ence, as well as data con­nected with habi­tats — water con­di­tions, lev­els of ph, and other things. Not habi­tat data in terms of dis­tri­b­u­tion is nessesary.

But mainly we have pro­vided basic expe­ri­ence and knowl­edge about keep­ing paros in tanks, — food, breed­ing behav­iour, fry devel­op­ment etc.

Also a spread­sheet is being devel­oped, — con­tain­ing all impor­tant doc­u­men­ta­tion and infor­ma­tion about all species.

To gather all this infor­ma­tion is a con­tin­u­ing pro­ces, and we invite every­one to take part in it by offer­ing their knowl­edge and spe­cific experience.

If you have any infor­ma­tion which you would like Chester Zoo to incor­po­rate in this Hus­bandry Guide­line, please write to This email address is being pro­tected from spam­bots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (IN ENG­LISH, PLEASE)

Your email will then be viewed by the PP and Chester Zoo, and any con­tri­bu­tion will be accredited.

Cap­tive management

• Enclo­sure
• sub­strate
• fur­nish­ing and maintenance
• envi­ron­ment (water qual­ity and water chemistry)
• envi­ron­men­tal enrichment
• light­ing
• life sup­port

Behav­iour

• activ­ity
• social behaviour/​social structure
• life sup­port systems

Breed­ing

• repro­duc­tion
• egg lay­ing and devel­op­ment times
• devel­op­ment and care of young
• clutch sizes

Diet and feed­ing behaviour

• Basic diet
• fry
• large juve­niles to adults
• spe­cial dietary requirements
• method of feed­ing or prepa­ra­tion of food items

Spe­cific problem

Rec­om­mended research for in-​situ (cap­tive pop­u­la­tions) — Chester Zoo has access to MSc and PhD stu­dents, — are there any ques­tions we want answering ?

SHOAL

In Feb­ru­ary 2019 we became part­ners with Shoal — a new online plat­form for fresh­wa­ter species conservation.

Please find their home­page here and a also find here a link to an arti­cle writ­ten by Michael Balzer, direc­tor of Shoal, Under­wa­ter Jew­els threa­thened by for­est fires

ASAP

In novem­ber 2019 we became part­ners with ASAP — species on the brink (Asian species Action Partnership)

You can find our spe­cial page in ASAP here

In novem­ber 2019 The PP was approached by Andrea Swat­man, head of the Aquar­ium Team at Chester Zoo. She had been tasked with

main­tain­ing IUCN insur­ance pop­u­la­tions as an out­come of IUCN (Inter­na­tional Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature) ex-​situ man­dates and EAZA (Euro­pean Asso­ci­a­tion of Zoos and Aquaria )Regional Col­lec­tion Plans.

The task is to main­tain ‘insur­ance pop­u­la­tions’ of the REDLIST crit­i­cally endagered species of P. alfredi and P. tweed­iei.

This is a dif­fi­cult task for Chester Zoo to do on their own and because keep­ing ‘insur­ance pop­u­la­tions’ is very close to what we have pre­ciously done with our ‘old’ GOD­FA­THER pro­gram, it was log­i­cal for us to offer to engage in this work.

The Parosphromenus Project there­fore is now engaged in keep­ing, main­tain­ing, breed­ing and report­ing these two species. P. alfredi is only present at very few hold­ers in Europe, but coop­er­a­tion has been estab­lished, and will report this — in Cen­sus, and to Chester Zoo. The same is hap­pen­ing for P. tweediei.

Also, a DNA test­ing of a species, which in the past was wrongly iden­ti­fied as P. tweed­iei, — but actu­ally may be P. alfredi, is underway.

It is our inten­tion to develop this struc­ture in the future to include other species, and other keep­ers. We are quite aware that not all really crit­i­cally endagered species are listed as such on the REDLIST, so this will not stop us from try­ing to cre­ate a struc­ture within the PP — using in par­tic­u­lar Cen­sus — to observe and cre­ate ‘insur­ance pop­u­la­tions’ for other species.

The species we are par­tic­u­larly con­serned about right now are p. deiss­neri, p. rub­ri­mon­tis.

‘Insur­ance pop­u­la­tion’ = IUCN has deter­mined that to pre­vent extinc­tion for one par­tic­u­lar species, it has become more impor­tant to make sure that this species is not kept in too small num­bers with few peo­ple. There­fore they wish to make cer­tain that the species is kept by a min­i­mum of 3 peo­ple, with a stock of a min­i­mum of 50. Such a stock is called an ‘insur­ance pop­u­la­tion’.

IUCN works together with EAZA (Euro­pean Asso­ci­a­tion of Zoos) of which Chester Zoo is a member.