[Peter Finke]

Dear Marcin, I like your way of telling us your various attempts to get your fish propagated. Everybody who reads it can sympathize with your hopes, and I do hope with you that finally you will be lucky and succeed. I do not think that you did handle anything severely wrong, to the contrary: you did everything very well. But sometimes it nevertheless doesn’t work out as it was to do, because we are dealing with living creatures. So, it could be that your male cannot fertilize the eggs, often later on it will work, but not in the beginning. Our fish, if young, must learn quite a lot of things as all living beings have to. Jörg Vierke once publicized a nice little movie on Parosphromenus paludicola Wakaf Tapei showing that the pair only slowly learned to fix the eggs at the ceiling the cave.
So, let me recall some points in short that I think to be important:
– It’s easier to produce the first young licorice gouramis not in a rather empty tank but in tank with plants (including floatings plants) and a layer of leaves on the bottom, since the youngest fish have much cover there.
– Four or five leaves are not enough; they must form a cover on the ground. At least that enlarges the living-chances of the young fish in a tank with adults.
– It’s much more difficult to raise a clutch of eggs separately without the adult fish because the male’s care must be substituted somehow.
– There is a time of ten or twenty days in which young after having swum out of the cave are very hard to detect. In most cases I have not succeeded, but there were many of them.
– You can offer caves of nearly any kind at nearly any place in the tank. The small black film containers are favourites with the fish because of very good small measures are their darkness inside. The can float on the surface (perhaps at a side glass of the tank) and will readily by taken.
– But small caves from pottery at the ground are equally conveniant. Mostly, the smaller one are preferred to those with a rather big hollow.
– Absolutely essential is the absence of Calcium, at least to 95 or 98%. Otherwise the eggs will not develop. Other minerals are less important, but should be restricted to a very low level.
– The pH is less important, but since the lowest degree of a concentration of germs is to be strived at, the best means to regulate that is an acid pH. It should definitely be below 6.8; about 6.0 is not bad for the beginning. But it could be 4.0 or even lower.
– An important point is the feeding of the adults. But in this respect you do all what can be done. Glassworms are very good for producing females with a good fertility.
– At any rate you should be prepared with live food for the youngest fish: Rotatoriae are best, but Paramecium is possible, too. In an older tank with leaves and plants the young fish will find something for the first days, but then, at the latest when they are to be seen in the open water or at the surface, active feeding must begin.
– Last remark: There are species I would recommend to begin with (filamentosus, paludicola, linkei) and not fish from the bintan-group. But I know that if one has to take the fish from a pet shop, you cannot fulfill those wishes. And eventually, you will have success. I am sure.