Yes, Helene is fully right in decribing these difficulties. When I wrote the Parobuch “Prachtguramis” together with Martin Hallmann, we quarreled a lot about the question which fish Dr. Walter Foersch had got by Dietrich Schaller, who caught them for him after having visited Dr. Alfred, at that time (1975) head of the Raffles museum in Singapore. I had myself seen these fish in Dr. Foersch’s fishroom, indeed I had got some pairs of his offspring from him for myself, my first Paros. We all called them “deissneri” at that time, but nearly forty years later writing that book it was entirely clear: they had certainly not been deissneri but something between rubrimontis, alfredi and tweedie. I voted for tweediei although the fish showed more blue than the purely red we knew at that time from the typical tweediei. Martin voted for a mix between rubrimontis and alfredi, and in the end we decided for that spec. Kota Tinggi. It was Allan Brown who had given us fish that he had caught in the Kota Tinggi-region, and indeed, they resembled most the pictures left showing the offspring of Foersch’s fish.
But what does that mean for the question alfredi-tweedei-rubrimontis? I tell you what: Dr. Kottelat, who did the scientific descriptions of these three species only lately, in 2005, decided from dead museum specimens to distinguish these three species. It’s the same problem we know from ornithology: The old science of the birds was a pure museum-science. People shot the birds and then science began: measuring, weighting, describing the bodies and so on. We can thank god that this has ended by the protest of many laymen in the late 19. century! But in our fish, we still have that museum-taxonomy. That is the problem. As long as an outdated method of describing new small fish defines the species, we are often incapable of to determine rightly our living fish that has not been assigned with undoubtedly true a location.
The question remains open whether the fish we call spec. Kota Tinggi and which has come the uncertain ways of the trade is a fish more akin to alfredi or more akin to something else. If the location would be clear this would point to the nearness of alfredi, and that strengthens the position of Martin’s. But we do not know anything about locations in this case and the original locations are anyhow destroyed nowadays; we can be happy if we still find Paros somewhere near to them. The catchers of these fish here in question must have used such unknown new locations. But the real problem is that the hitherto scientific knowledge forces us to decide between those three species, what in truth is probably an intermediate form not decribed scientifically.
My conclusion is threefold: 1. We have nice fish and are happy that they still can be found, although nearly all great traditional locations around are destroyed for ever; 2. In this case the determination spec. Kota Tinggi is the most likely one, but to call this cf. alfredi is an open question; and 3. We need new methods of taxonomy, definitely including genetic methods. From all we know from this research up to now, the genetic differences between alfredi, rubrimontis and tweedie are so small that a genetic researcher would not have splitted these three into fully developed species. They may represent developing species, but nowadays the economic destruction of the Malayan countryside puts for ever an end to this development.