One week update: Daily 1L replacements with RO water have brought levels from ~420ms to 165ms, and 7.6pH to 6.4pH, temps ~22C. Over the course of this week I’ll go for ~40ms and 5.0pH.
The male here is looking very good – I can’t wait to see him fully grown! He has claimed a cocco cave on one side of the tank as his space…
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The group dynamic has changed from the fishes schooling around together to now more settled in and little hiding places being claimed as territories. The females have been doing the most –
Here two females squabble over a cocco cave…
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And the winner is this female – she has claimed two hiding places as her own on the other side of the tank, about 1/3 the tank space on one side…possibly the dominant fish of them all. I think this may be good, as I could select the dominant male above with this dominant female as a potential breeding pair.
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All the group are feeding well, nauplii the basic food, along with occasional grindals. I will set up some moina cultures soon. (I do not have access to mosquito larvae this time) So hopefully nauplii, moina and grindals (sparingly) will suffice for food.
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Helene, I first read your reply (too late one evening) as saying you thought these did not look like sumatranus – rereading I see you thought they do look like them, and I would have to agree they look quite similar to sumatranus. I found this site http://parosphromenusphotograph.web.fc2.com/sumatranus.html with great photos of paros! I think my fish show several similarities with the fish pictured and labeled as P. sumatranus, including the golden scales along the lateral area – really nice feature. As per Peter, the original collecting area(s) of the fish described as sumatranus have been destroyed, then these fish would possibly have to come from some other location, and thereby, understandably might show variations from the original sumatranus form. That they are close to or a variant of sumatranus seems clear, but again, we’ll have to wait until they (hopefully) display.