[Peter Finke]

Reply to Martin:
Martin, you asked for the changes in temperature that you could impute to the licorice gouramis. I do not know exactly, but I should be careful. My tanks without electric heater are placed in rooms with rather stable temperatures between 19 and 25 degrees Celsius. They are heated in winter, and in summer the hottest temperatures outside the house do not affect the room temperature very much; in any case it’s always below 30 degrees. And experience shows that to be an important maximum boarderline; Parosphromenusdon’t stand higher temperatures for long.
It’s much more difficult to give the low boarderline. As you see, I make no experiments with lower temperatures than 19 degrees Celsius. But we often send Parosphromenus-fish with a post-parcel. There are sometimes problems at times with high temperatures (above 30 degrees, as I mentioned above), but only seldom the opposite. Of course, if it’s freezing outside, you have to take measures by a good packing and use heatings packs, and generally we tend to avoid such periods for sending. But often the parcel arrives (mostly after one or two nights of travel) with water cooled to 16 or 17 degrees Celsius, and the fish are quiet but obviously healthy. Those low temperatures are certainly too low for keeping the fish in the aquarium, but if they are healthy they stand them if necessary.
Mostly, my tanks have 22 – 24 degrees Celsius. “Lower is better than hotter” seems to be a good rule.
I don’t think there are important differences between the species. Parosphromenus is rather homogeneous a genus; that is valid for their demands with temperatures, too.