Some remarks on “Blue line”-Paros:
As all of you know by now the name-giving of the fish-traders is chaotic. There are only two leading principles that seem to be of commercial value only: first, give a name that gives rise to interesting thoughts and connotations, so that people buy the fish (“Giant red sparkling licorice gouramy”). Second: helplessness. All these fish look alike, but the experts say they are different! OK, some have red, others only blue, so let those with red be called “Red line” and that with blue be called “Blue line”. In 2005 we had in Europe lots of “Red line”-Paros. It is not clear up to the present day what it was; probably different species mixed or not mixed; totally unclear.
And at the same time the “Blue lines”. Here, the situation is different, for it was the time when the rich Paro-habitats on Sumatra were found and the exploitation started. Since then we learned that Sumatra harbours several new species but a lot of bintan-like forms, too. They may (partly) even be identical with bintan, but we don’t know hitherto. Among those bintan-like forms were (and are) two from the north of Jambi, spec. Blue line the one and spec. Sentang the other.
Personally, I had three different fish all called “Blue line” already, all coming from the trade business. One had long light blue ventrals, with long filaments nearly white, others had ventrals with short blueish filaments, both very beautiful fish but decisively different. And the third had some brownish-failtly reddish tinge in the caudal, equally nice. And additionally spec. Sentang, which always was less colourful, a bit greenish or brownish. less glamourous, with less sparkling blue markings.
Obvioulsly, the traders are not interested in clearing that up. They even hide to locations, and it is the locations that ate the pathways to better identification. Horst Linke told me that the catchers who earn a cent for ten fish throw the fisg from the next river into the box with the fish from the first if there is place left. Nobody cares to distinguish if the fish are as similar as bintan-variants are.
But, although it is unclear what they are and the experts are angry and grumble at this practice, the trade continues to name them “blue line”. Apart from the fact that the mixture of fish caught in different river systems is definitely wrong, we cannot – at present – hope to reveal the “right identity” behind the so-called Blue lines. To all our knowledge all of them come from Sumatra and there is never a harveyi or a species from Kalimantan mixed between them. All we can do is to separate the different Blue lines and take them as Blue line 1, Blue line 2, and so on. As far as we know there is no well-known species behind, only (perhaps) bintan. And we can say the following: If there is at all a single species (or two) behind the label “Blue line”, all are from Jambi/Sumatra. That is for certain (at least as our present-day-knowledge is concerned). (This as a reply to Steff’s remark that there are so-called Blue lines available at Tokyo).
Two more remarks: Sverting, it is very unlikely that P. gunawani is mixed in, since we have never had Gunawani in recent years besides two personel non-profit imports of a few animals only. The are really stout, robust fish. There were two imports of them before in the nineties of the last century, and the fish were called Jambi 1 and Jambi 2, but the latter probably was not gunawani but spec. Sentang or “Blue line”. The former cerrainly was the fish that was recently called gunawani.
And Steff: nice linguistic plays. Yes, translation is the next source for misunderstandings …