[quote=”BigTom” post=752](…) I normally like to have a little microfauna in all my tanks, to help with clean-up and as a supplementary food source, but does anyone know if shrimp (Neocaridinia sp), amphipods (Hyallela azteca) or ostracods might impact breeding success through egg/larvae predation, or will the Paros defend their spawn sufficiently? (…) Tom[/quote]
Tom, I can fully comply with Bennie. In fact, I received C. parvidentata from him, all what he says is right. Other species mostly have problems with the water values in blackwater aquaria; obviously we have up to the present day not the species of shrimps that live in those waters. (For there are shrimps living, there offspring certainly represent a large part of the Paro’s diets. And the many shrimp-specialist we have today follwing the “nano-fashion” only think of their pets and cultivate them in tap water. They are nearly of no help to us).
Bennie stresses the fact that the adult Paros and their growing offspring feed on the offspring of C. parvidentata, but we are a bit unsure to which extent the adult shrimps feed on or at least molest the offspring of the licorice. This is a typical aquarium-problem; in nature nobody cares. But if one is on the trip to breed his rare fish he should – to my experience – leave Caridinas aside. The same holds for the small Hyallela. You could feed your adult fish some semigrown offspring of the shrimps; that would certainly stimulate their breeding capacities, but a breeding tank is not a fine community tank. It’s a tank with a clear destiny: to create offspring, either of your fish or of your shrimps. You should decide what you want.
Bigger and more beautiful tanks that try to simulate natural conditions to a greater extent are without doubt very attractive (see your own “bucket of mud” and all of our reactions to it) to all of us, and it is a good thing to see such a wonderful example set up by someone who thinks aesthetically and biologically. But it’s not the first “duty” of a friend of Parosphromenus. That is breeding, for we cannot be sure how long we still can import those rare species’. Even the hype of spec. Sentang seems to indicate that there are last productive habitats of that form on Sumatra to be expoited now, but that hype will end when they are destroyed (just as the hype of “blue line” has ended before or the greater quantities of rubrimontis, alfredi or tweedie even before in western Malaysia). Therefore breeding is the first thing a Paro-friend should learn. One can set-up such a wonderful tank like the “bucket” when one has many self-produced young of the rare fish, and there you can include the shrimps, of course. But I should give the advice not to do so in the small breeding tank. (At least, it’s my opinion).