[Peter Finke]

I refer to the picture that Colin gave us here. He says that this is the original picture of the fish called “deissneri” that the exporter used. Well, well! Or better: not well! It’s a background reminding of a detective story.
This picture was taken by Hans-Joachim Franke as one of a well-known series that he shot in the seventies of the fish he received from Dr. Walther Foersch. Franke, at that time a famous specialist for labyrinths in the GDR, was in contact with Foersch in Munich and was lucky to get some of this fish, because the GDR was a closed communist state. Foersch was the first to discover the real breeding conditions of these fish. He had received his fish from Dietrich Schaller (“Trichopsis schalleri”), who caught them after having adviced by Eric Alfred (at that time head of the Raffles Museum Singapore) at Ayer Hitam. At that time this was one of the few places known for the occurrence of P. “deissneri”, as they were called. Later on, many people caught these fish at this place. As Kottelat and Ng tell us 2005 (in their publication containing the last up to now decribed six species, including P. tweediei) the fish from Ayer Hitam belonged to what we today call P.tweediei. There are some open questions with this description, however, referring to the variability of tweediei: it seems to be markedly greater than stated by Kottelat and Ng. The fish Foersch had (which I saw there with him) and which Franke received form him (and others too, in fact I received a pair, too) were obviously such a variant of what we today call tweediei, at that times they were called (as others) “deissneri”. By the way: Today Ayer Hitam is completely destroyed.
Therefore the exporter uses a very old photo of a fish that shows a variant of tweediei, but definitely not the fish we call deissneri today. Obviously he makes no difference between some very distinct Parosphromenus-species with round caudal fin and calls all of them (as all of us did in former times) “deissneri” (and so does most of the trade till the present day, but we should not continue this practice). Today, the male real deissneri is well-defined and clearly distinguished from all others at first sight by the publication of Kottelat and Ng from 1998 (describing bintan and redescribing deissneri); look at our species account.
Therefore, either the picture shows the fish which the exporter sells, then it is not deissneri. Or he only gives a nice photo of a nice fish (following the motto: Well, you should not make such a fuss about it, they all look very similar), and then the question must be open what species he sells with this false name. He states that the fish come from Bangka island. So, if this at least is true: There are at least two species occuring, bintan and deissneri. The males are completely different, to be seen at the first sight. But his picture shows neither the one nor the other. P. bintan is excluded by colour, P. deissneri is excluded by structure,too. The most likely explanation is that the fish offered is one of the many “other forms” which are somewhat bintan-like. But the picture does not help us to solve the puzzle.
A Parosphromenus detective story …
A word to C.Way: contact Anthony that he tells you the exporter.