Steff, I regret to say it but you are wrong:
1. I fully understand an aquarist who wishes to know which Paro he/she has, especially if there is a suspicion that the trade name was wrong.
2. But I have to explain why there are a few cases in which this wish could not be matched even by the experts.
3. Take the following comparison: Suddenly, there is an unknown bird in your garden. You ask an expert and he tells you the species. Even – say – in winter-time when there are birds from the east or the north as guests in our regions and some look a bit different than our nominate species an expert can tell it. The taxonomic situation is clear, even underlined with detailed genetic knowledge.
4. Our case is different, and all Paro-friends must know the backgrounds. There is no complete knowledge of the world’s Paros. The hitherto taxonomy is in many cases OK, but in some it is uncertain and instable: the round-tailed forms with red in the fins. Take the question that Martin Hallmann and I have tackled in our book on the Paros: Which fish had Walter Foersch, the founder of Paro-aquaristis? He thought “deissneri”, but surely they were not deissneri. But – as the fine coloured photos by Hans-Joachim Richter tell us – they probably were no tweediei, no rubrimontis and no alfredi either. There is an undescribed form from Western Malaysia – spec. Kota Tinggi – which come near to Foersch’s fish. Maybe ist was to be found at Ayer Hitam in those times. Now, the location is destroyed. We will never know for sure which form it was. I had got some from Foersch personally, and will never know.
5. In your case maybe the situation changes in a few years, but presently it is impossible to say. We have new knowledge about an astonishing variety even in tweediei, according to food and other environmental conditions that can change. We see that the hitherto used methods of taxonomy are oldfashioned and unreliable. In many cases there is no problem; a quindecim is a quindecim and a filamentosus is a filamentosus, but if the determination is based on colours only and we have no lacation for sure (the trade situation), it is impossible to decide even for experts in some cases. And the reason is not their weak expertise, but the weak old-fashioned methods of taxonomy and the habits of the trade.
6. It is likely that more genetic information will not solve your problem. All we know now, the species in question are very near to each other. It is more likely that a bold scientist will revise the genus altogether with the new methods of genetically underlined determination and throw some of the species away which are based on colour differences only and tell us: Paros develop presently very fastly; the changing environmental situation results in many semi-species. The species differentiation has not yet come to a halt in theses cases.
7. This is the most likely explanation for your problem. It is a very interesting situation, quite different to the problems of the majority of aquarists. We have a genus which is in rapid change itself. Isn’t that interesting, a very specific situation of great suspense? A different thing is your motives. I fully understand them, but I have to explain the backgrounds why it cannot be met presently.