Be aware, long text 😉 (I’m a writer in my spare time, sorry…)
No, I will keep thinking about Paro’s, ever I first read about the species I was thinking of a way to keep them and breed them.
Besides the big tank I already had some tentative plans to make a little breeding station, I have a little corner in our bedroom where I spend time with my other hobby (electronics), which will be redone in a few months. I was thinking of putting up a rack where I can place a few small tanks to breed some fish and most probably this will be 2 or 3 different species of Paro’s. But before that can happen I want to finish the big tank first.
The tank was built with Paro’s as the most important inhabitant, and mainly because of Paro’s I went with the Borneo biotope but if everybody here advises against keeping them there I will probably try to find a different fish that would ‘work’ in there and push out the Paro plans for another 6 to 12 months.
It would be a shame, but I don’t want to do damage to the hard work of the people who are breeding these fish so they can be preserved.
It certainly isn’t the case that I don’t want Paro’s if they can’t be in the big tank, but they are a big part of the plan for this project. I didn’t get the feeling from the literature about Paro’s I found that they where so fragile that competition from small barb sorts for example would be an issue.
I adjusted my plans after Bernd’s advice to not combine them, for example, with Betta albimarginata (which already proved to be even more difficult to find than the Paro’s, even our local fish store has some Paro’s at the moment, can’t tell you which species, as they are labelled Deissneri).
For me, right now it is like this:
If you advise against holding Paro’s in the big tank, I will probably reconsider about that. You people are the experts, if you say it can’t/shouldn’t be done, I will have to respect that.
If you say it can be done but might not be the best choice, I think I will try it and see if I can have some success. I have already thought of systems to bring the food close to where they stay in the tank (from what I’ve seen and read Paro’s usually find a corner in some bigger tanks and remain there, so something can be made) and try to keep a close eye on the caves for any spawning activity.
Again, I don’t want to negate the hard work that is being done in breeding these fish by buying 3 pairs only for them to die off because I did not treat them in the way it should be done.