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Cre­ated: 03 May 2022

Yes­ter­day I vis­ited Malmø Akvariefören­ing, in Swe­den, to talk about parosphromenus species and the work of the Parosphromenus Project. An alto­gether pleas­ant evening with inter­ested lis­ten­ers, and also a fine day walk­ing around in spring­time Malmø cen­ter. Heres a few pic­tures — Helene

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Cre­ated: 12 April 2022

P. nagyi Schaller 1985

More details please visit our species page on the web­site https://​www​.parosphromenus​-project​.org/​e​n​/​p​-​n​a​g​y​i

P. nagyi from ranges of the east coast of West­ern Malaysia. The species has a rel­a­tively large area of dis­tri­b­u­tion; it is found from Pekan in the south going north via Kuan­tan and Cher­at­ing up to the area north of Cukai.

Although the species has a large dis­tri­b­u­tion area, most of the nat­ural habi­tats have been mas­sively altered by human activ­i­ties. Nowa­days the fish is found mainly in remain­ing resid­ual habi­tats and road­side canals that are still fed by rem­nants of for­mer black water swamps.

When the males show courtship colours, they can­not be con­fused with other species. In nor­mal colours males are still dis­tin­guish­able by their mor­pho­logic dif­fer­ences. The risk of con­fu­sion is higher for the females, because mor­pho­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences are less sig­nif­i­cant, but on close obser­va­tion they are still eas­ily iden­ti­fi­able. The pat­tern is com­pletely dif­fer­ent from other species: a hor­i­zon­tal two-​part coloura­tion, below black­ish, top dark to golden brown. Also the very short look­ing cau­dal, in which the fin rays exceed the fin area by about 1mm of and where the turquoise edge appears fur­ther for­ward, is char­ac­ter­is­tic of this species.

Unusu­ally short fil­a­ments of the ven­tral fins, which show a dark spot are also very typ­i­cal for both sexes.

Two habi­tat types are known in which the males are eas­ily dis­tin­guish­able by the eye-​catching band in the tail: in the form of terra typ­ica (Form “Kuan­tan”) this is white, and thus shows a dif­fer­ent colour as the blue rib­bons in dor­sal and anal. In the north­ern form “Cher­at­ing” the band is blue as well. In addi­tion the above-​described exten­sion of the tail fin rays is less clear in this form, and there­fore the cau­dal appears to be longer. “Kuan­tan” males also carry a sig­nif­i­cant dark spot in the rear part of the dor­sal fin. (photo 3)

The species is rarely seen in trade today; only the Kuantan-​form. The aquar­ium stock depends almost com­pletely on pri­vately imported fish. P. nagyi is one of the more eas­ier species to breed.

Pho­to­cre­dit 1. Mar­tin Hall­mann, 2. Helene Schoubye, 3. Vierke

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Cre­ated: 04 April 2022

AN OPPOR­TU­NITY TO MEET IN PER­SON — IGL MEET­ING 17 – 19 JUNI 2022

Our last inter­na­tional meet­ing in per­son was 2019 in Chester (UK). Due to the global pan­demic sit­u­a­tion, we were not able to arrange another meet­ing since that time. Today we still have issues with the risc of plan­ning and later can­celling a meeting.

How­ever, we feel the need to meet in per­son again and sensed a chance when the IGL invited us to join their meet­ing in Ver­den (DE). So if you are inter­ested, save the date June 17^th, 2022!

As the IGL is mainly a ger­man organ­i­sa­tion, most talks will be held in ger­man. But we asked the speaker to use eng­lish slides if they give the talk in ger­man. Apart from that, you will have the chance to meet and get to know us in the evening in an infor­mal Parosphromenus-​Project meeting.

More infor­ma­tion about place and time here

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Cre­ated: 23 March 2022

P. ornat­i­cauda Kot­te­lat 1991

In the future we will try to intro­duce a bit of each species to our audi­ences each month, so keep­ers can find answers to some com­mon ques­tions eas­ier. For more details please visit our species page on our web­site. https://​www​.parosphromenus​-project​.org/​e​n​/​p​-​o​r​n​a​t​i​c​a​u​d​a

P. ornat­i­cauda, from down­stream Kapuas, West Kali­man­tan. From Anjun­gan to Man­dor. Found in very typ­i­cal black peat water swamps. (pH 4.5, con­duc­tiv­ity 39 micro-​Siemens, tem­per­a­ture 27.6 degrees C, Linke) We con­firmed a even lower pH of 4.1 at 2017.

Ornat­i­cauda is one of the two smaller species (parvu­lus group), which is quite dif­fer­ent from other Parosphromenus species. They will not cross with other big species, and thus, can be found together with P. anjun­ga­nen­sis in the same habi­tat in the wild. In aquar­ium they are also peace­ful room­mates of other Paros (except parvulus).

Thus, in com­par­i­son to oth­ers big con­geners, ornat­i­cauda is a bit more sen­si­tive. The keep­ing and breed­ing attemps require more patient and con­trol of the water qual­ity, espe­cially clean­li­ness. The clutches are usu­ally small (10 to 20 eggs, rarely more) and they are often “rearranged” (from one cave to another) or “dis­ap­pear” com­pletely over night. The courtship dance of the male (see below) needs a lot of space, so small tanks (around 10l) are less suited then tanks with 20l or more. The con­duc­tiv­ity of the water should not be above 40 micro-​Siemens. The sen­si­tiv­ity of the eggs towards harm­ful bac­te­ria is high, so it is advis­able to have a low pH value (between 3 and 4) and a high con­tent of humic acids. How­ever, suc­cess­ful breed­ing has been recorded at pH 6.5 in clear water. Still, suc­cess­ful ornat­i­cauda breed­ing is regarded as the “high school” of licorice gourami hobby.

Although P. ornat­i­cauda appears today occa­sion­ally in high num­bers in the inter­na­tional trade, and although sig­nif­i­cantly more loca­tions are known com­pared to the time of its dis­cov­ery, it has to be accepted that the species is highly endan­gered. Part of the orig­i­nal habi­tat is already destroyed and has been trans­formed to palm oil plan­ta­tions. Many of the still exist­ing P.ornaticauda – biotopes have been badly dam­aged by con­t­a­m­i­na­tion with pes­ti­cides. Mainly these habi­tats are more or less affected rem­nants of swamps, still hold­ing black water, but these refuges are get­ting smaller and smaller. After all, this area is one of the most devel­opped area of this island. Human activ­i­ties are destroy­ing peat swamps and forests along the Kapuas river. Thus, it is now an IUCN CR species.

We hope more and more of them can be main­tained and dis­trib­uted within the aquar­ium com­mu­nity instead of col­lect­ing from wild.

Details

Cre­ated: 12 March 2022

Feed­ing Parosphromenus

.… means that you have to fig­ure out many dif­fer­ent ways of pro­vid­ing good live food as it is dif­fi­cult to get them to take any other kinds of foods. Hatch­ing brine shrimp is one of the foods which is often used, and we are often asked how to do this.

Depend­ing on which way you look at it, brine shrimp hatch­eries can be as sim­ple or as com­pli­cated as you like and there are many designs on the mar­ket. These home­made hatch­eries are used by our UK co-​ordinator Kevin Mar­shall who has made them from 1 litre juice bot­tles along with a push fit on/​off valve and a few odds and ends. While the over­all design is one that has been around for a num­ber of years the con­struc­tion method is sim­ple and cost effective.

I am cer­tain there are many other ways of doing this, you are wel­come to show us your way along with any tips and tricks that you have about brine shrimp in the com­ments below.

Kevin Mar­shall