GUESS WHAT????? The male, as of yesterday, has started courting the females! He’s a real spaz about doing it…I was under the impression that paros are calm, retiring fish, but this male (affectionately named ‘Huffy’) seems to believe that everything needs to be done at light speed (when he goes up to grab air for his implied bubblenest, he looks like he is going to go into orbit :O) His colors have darkened…in particular, his fins are jet black, to the point that it is often hard to see the blue in them. Unfortunately, his cave appears to be in the back of the tank…if he succeeds I won’t be seeing much of him for a while…
On a side note…I once also saw one of the females grabbing air. This confuses me…I’m assuming she is not building a bubble nest, and there is nothing particularly wrong about the water conditions (temp around 27-28 celcius, PH 5.6, conductivity somewhere around 30-35 microsiemens…don’t know water hardness, but it couldn’t possibly be high enough. NH3 is negligable, although there is a significant amount of ammonium, NH4 – about .5 ppm: wouldn’t think that is enough to bother the fish, though…)