[Peter Finke]

Nico, I just replied to you with a long note, but then a sudden interruption by a friend forced me offline and – since I had not saved anything, all was gone. So I try to write some of it again.
You are a happy man and we are happy people since we have Olivier Perrin. He is a remarkable man, a musician who is one of our best breeders of licorice You are very lucky to have received that four species from him, and now (only days later) even fry of all already!
All those species are of great value to the project: 1. opallios, since we have only fish from the trade (without location) which are somewhat frail; mine have died some weeks ago, others do not better. You have fish with location, that’s good! Then 2. tweediei. The original location Ayer Hitam has been fully destroyed since long. There are some locations left, but they are severely anthropogentically transformed; the fish live at the edge of their possibilities. And they give us puzzles to solve: When Peter Beyer caught them in 2008, they were all red (as they “should” be). When he caught them at the same place in 2009 they were all green … How are yours? Then 3. alfredi: Formerly, we had several variants form several places. Now there are only a few bad places left and often the animals are frail too. And there is an additional puzzle: Some travellers tell us that just at the main alfredi-place swim nagyi! This should be impossible, but it obviously is not. How did the nagyi get there? And will they suppress the alfredi? We don’t know. So be happy and breed them! And the biggest puzzle: 4. parvulus . Formerly we knew only one or two tiny locations. But since Horst Linke’s visits in 2007 and 2008 we know that parvulusseems to be the most widespread licorice gourami of all! Inhabiting a huge area of hundreds of square kilometers.
But: The newest information comes from geneticist Dr. Rüber (Switzerland). Investigation of parvulus from different locations display very different genetic codes! Are several species involved? Nobody knows.
My males (from Babugus) develop very red anals and dorsals, that I have never seen before. Most males develop only a few red dots (see Horst’s picture in the recent “Amazonas”-issue).
Therefore you are a lucky guy. Try to raise that fry of all your four rare species, and the we must distribute it to the best breeders we have!!
So, I think now I have reconstructed most of my message that I lost half an hour before.