A word from the U.S.: Tony Pinto

[Peter Finke]

Dear Peter, thank you for your email and the census. I know Barbara and Allan Brown very well since I’ve been keeping fishes for many years and allan was a master breeder for the small Parosphromenus until he gave up fishes last year ! I couldn’t even persuade him to keep P. allani or P. harveyi ! and of course I have gone with David Armitage regularly on fish collection efforts !

I am not keeping any Parosphromenus right now as I have little or no space and keep mainly killifishes, wild bettas and a few livebearers. In the US, there is interest in the licorice gourami when there is an article in the aquarium press becasue they have beautiful colours when breeding. But there is no dedicated conservation group because the number aquarium hobbyists is becoming smaller and we don’t seems to be growing as quickly as we did in the 1970s ! So, my opinion is that at most we have maybe 20 hobbyists who would be interested in keeping and propagating these fish and the numbers would likely drop over time. It happened recently with the bad economy although my local aquarium club has been seeing more people in the past 9 months ! Lainey Alexander, Robert Goldstein, Mike Hellweg and Mark Denaro are good aquarists (…) and Goldstein and Hellweg would be the persons to keep these successfully for a long period. I know Goldstein cultures live food and also breeds other small fishes like Elassoma ! Mark Denaro brings in many South East Asian fishes and of course he gets them from Singapore. There is another dealer in Portland (NW USA) who also brings in South East Asian fish but because licorice gourami are delicate while shipping, he only brings a few in at a time to avoid losses. We do not have many conservation programs for fishes in the aquarium hobby in the USA and what programs do exist are in danger of disappearing due to lack of a good support structure in place – this is true even with endangered livebearers from Middle / South America. If there was not the 20 or so people keeping them going, many goodeid species would have been extinct years ago because many public aquariums have stopped their conservation programs or worse closed down and disbanded their collections.

Regrettably the habitats in SE Asia are also going too quickly for all the wild fishes and animals. It seems to be the same everywhere I travel these days. Our species has not done well keeping the planet and it’s other inhabitants safe and from danger of permanent extinction. Sadly, there is less and less of habitats for the fish and wildlife than ever before.

But I’ll be happy to help you out if needed – if you need English translations, I will be happy to help out. I work on the AAGB Web site, so why not this if you need the help.

All the best and I look forward to hearing from you.

Tony Pinto

[Peter Finke]

November 25th, 2011: Dear Tony,I want to thank you for moderating this new forum from the beginning. It was a great help to know you being the moderator in the first months. I am sure that this has helped very much getting things into working.
Now, near the end of our first year, the moderation has been changed to Mark Denaro (from “Anubias Design”). Many greetings to you, Mark! Let us hope that we can further promote the keeping and breeding (!) of the Licorice Gouramis in America! Be welcomed!

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