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Hi all,
I’m new on this forum, so a little introduction. Some 15 years ago I had two tanks, one with trichogater trichopterus and one with undetermined aphyosemions. Both species trived and created offspring. My college-career-children (you know, the ratrace) putted aquariumkeeping to the background, but I recently rediscovered the hobby. Right now I have a small 60cm tank with some tanichthys albonubes, as an experiment. I read Diane Walstad’s “The ecology of the planted aquarium”, which in short promotes a more ecological, less technical kind of fishkeeping. Basic principles are a soil (!) as plantmedium, as much (fastgrowing) plants as possible, no filtration or waterchanges (as the plants take up al nitrogen compounds), direct sunlight as main lightsource and a moderate stocking of fish.
Up to now this experiment is running one year and a great succes! The tanichthys are very happy, I cannot detect any nitrogen compounds and have no algae-problem (however, I do have some algae, but I do not see them as problematic). This style of aquariumkeeping suits me very well: no expensive equipment, no waterchanges (really, none at all), and a pretty and healthy tank as a result.
Now I recently stumbled upon the parosphromenus and fell head over heels in love with them. I read about this project, and the motives behind it, and this made me more detemined to, at one point, also start with keeping and hopefully breeding parosphromenus. Since I guess this is the place to find expperienced keepers, I have some questions I would like to ask.
– Has anybody exerience with keeping paros in a low tech tank as described above?
– Do you forsee major problems in low tech at the given requirement the paros have? (Low pH, no displved salts so a low buffer capacity)
– Which plants work well in “paros-water”?
– The Aqualog “All Labyrinths” gives as temperature advice 18-22°C. Is this ok in your experience?Thanks in advance for your help!
ThijsMy Walstad experiment.
I fight the technique-driven ideology of the “normal” aquarium since decades. Walstad was new for America, she has many predecessors in Europe, but they are denounced as the “old” aquarium meanwhile surpassed by more “modern”, more successfull types of tanks. That’s nonsense.
The book I wrote (with M. Hallmann) on Parosphromenus, “Prachtguramis”, is intended and written as a fight against that ideology of the industry which is behind the actual trends towards big tanks, the filter-religion, thousand artifical food-canisters and liquids that the aquarist should believe to need; they are needed by their inventors only. Our book informs about these backgrounds of the fate of the licorice gouramies called economization and globalization which was an international research project I was involved as a theorist of science (read about in in THE PROJECT, see left menue) and led me to see our hobby as driven by that ideology and describe Paro-aquaristics as an alternative.
But mind: Parosphromenus are blackwater organisms living in habitats nearly free of submerged plants with water between 6.0 and 3.0 containing small traces of minerals only, no calcium. The Walstad type of aquarium is good as an alternative for that stupid technical tanks promoted by the hobby-industry, for it depends largely on the biological acitivity of the growing submerged plants. But you cannot use most of them in extremely acid Paro-waters of nearly no mineral contents, and you cannot add them by a rich soil or the products of the industry; if you do, you cannot keep that extreme values stable necessary for our fish.
However, most of my fellow-specialists for Parosphromenus and I nevertheless keep and breed successfully all forms and species in nearly techique-free tanks. All of my 33 small tanks of 12 liters each that contain most of the Paros hitherto described and many other forms not yet described are without any filtering or other technical devices; the only necessity is a frequent change of the water and live food (the live foods you need for Paros is of high value in avoiding that marketing-religion of aquarium-filtering). See my central array of 24 tanks which was published many times before.
The small tanks look very green but the plants are restricted to a few groups only that bear this water (mosses, some ferns, some hardy pieces of submerged shoots and springs, an occasional cryptocoryne. But mind: for Paros, you cannot imitate that thick cover of nutrient-rich soil recommended by Walstad or the European heroes of the natural aquarium because of the reasons mentioned above. Most aquarists are not conscious about the big differences between the structure of the natural habitats and the small glass-container we call aquarium. It should be possible to grow blackwater cryptocorynes (C. bullosa, pallidinervia, griffithii, keei and others) but this method is ripened fully for emers conditions only, not for the submersed situation. Ans the normal aquarium cryptocorynes (as for instance C. affinis ot all the forms from Sri Lanka) are used to entirely different waters; they need fertilization and do not live under the conditions of nearly mineral free heavily acid blackwaters).
Nevertheless, we can (and should) keep and breed blackwater-organisms as the Paros are very successful in nearly technique-free tanks, but not in Walstad-type. Diane’s array is meant for “normal” aquarium fish adapted to “normal” water and richly planted by submerged plants of a high biological activity. But we describe a very successful alternative to this in the “Prachtgurami”-book.
So, I support your ideas strongly in principle but that cannot be attained by the Walstad aquarium. Try our recipes for the set-up of successful blackwater tanks. The whole Parosphromenus-project is based upon this alternative to the silly fashions of the pet-industry which is part of the huge global destruction that doomes the life of the Paros to death.
Hi Peter,
Thank you very much for your elaborate answer. I’m glad that I seem to have entered a “non commercialised” aquarium community!
I was already planning to buy a copy of the paro-buche – German is not that different from Dutch – as I want to be well prepared before I start with paros.
Concerning your remarks on the topic – do you think the soil in itself will have a negative impact on the specific water requirements of the paros, or do you think it is impossible to maintain enough fastgrowing plants to take up all of the nitrogen? Why are the water changes necessary? This is to remove exces nitrogen and prevent a nitrogen build-up?
In the last case I am convinced that with a few adaptations, the need to do waterchanges can be ruled out or kept to a minimum, by using adapted plants. I know that for example Spathyfillum species trive on very soft an acidic water, take up loads of nitrogen and trive in the aquarium, as long as their foiliage is above the waterlevel. Other species, such as dracena braunii (lucky bamboo) can serve this purpose. Again, this is against common knowledge as to which plants are absolutely not suiitable for use in an aquarium, but no less true in practice!
And what about the temperature? Is room temperature ok for paros (as in 18-22°C in winter and early spring up to 22-26°C during summer and early autumn)?
Spathyfillum in aquarium, roots in the soil at the bottom. New leaves every two weeks, flowering regularly. On the left dracena braunii, producing vast leaf-mass.
Thijs, “soil” is not exact a concept that is helpful here. Walstads “soil” is a nutrient-rich soil for the normal aquarium with normal fish and normal water. There are Paro-aquarists successful with pure peat-soil, but I am not in favour with this practice. One cannot fight the destruction of peat bogs in Asia by destroying our European ones. Better use a pure quartz bottom, but this only will help in anchoring your plants that need this; it will not nourish them. In most of my Paro-tanks there is a bottom-layer of some millimeters up to one cm only, with leaves on most of the places upon it.
There is no serious nitrogen-problem with a well built Paro-tank, even of 12 liters only and containg one pair, since the fish are very small, eat little amounts of live food. The live food is essential; you cannot overfeed your fish. In tanks of 30 liters small (!) groups of Paros can live very well, even in company with Boraras spec. But mind: The Boraras need more food than the Paros even although they are still smaller. They swim around and need energy. Ans they prevent young Paros from growing up. I never had Paros in tanks bigger than 50 or 100 liters maximum; you cannot watch the full behaviour, and it’s a nonsense from the desire-of-space-fish-point of view; a Paro pair needs a cave and only little space around. In nature its home range is not bigger than a small aquarium. You should not keep too many fish in a tank if you intend to see the full behaviour.
Mind that they are heavily endangered fish; quite different to Boraras or Trichopsis. We don’t “keep” Paros, we care for them and see them fulfill the full life-cycle including the whole breeding program. If you leave the young in the parent’s tank, you have the advantage that feeding Artemia and Moina serves the old and the somewhat grown young; only for the first two weeks you often need still smaller food. But if the tank is decorated with Javamoss, floating Ceratopteris and leaves on the ground, there is enough hiding space for 10 to 30 young even in a 12-liter-tank. Later on this tank is too small and feeding will produce too many relics; you surely have to change the water more often.
Your remarks on the water purifying powers of some riparian plants with the main amount of their leaves above the water surface (as Spatiphyllum for instance) are mainly applyable to the normal aquarium with tap-water and not the blackwater-tank with nearly destilled water. They need a thick layer of soil for their big roots. Partly applicable is leading the air-roots of Monstera and similar plants into a tank without such a bottom, but a purely blackwater tank has much too pure water in order to nourish that plants. Nevertheles, you might experiment with this. There, you could surely care for “easy” species (as P. linkei or P. nagyi or P. paludicola, the latter living at the borderline of black and clear waters). But most of the interesting Paro-species (as the true P. deissneri, the bintan-variants, opallios or ornaticauda) need the full program of attention, the best water and the least possible germ concentration. Mind that P. ornaticauda for instance normally have clutches of ten or 15 eggs only.
The germ concentration is a very important point; it plays no role in Walstad’s book since most “ornamental” fish are able to stand high concentrations. The most useful measuring kit for Paro-aquarists wpuld be a kit measuring the amount of germs. These kits exist and are sold by a highly specified industry at moderate prices, but up to now it is not sold in the hobby shops since normal aquarists don’t need them. If they used them, they would be frightened and startled about the values quite common in nice looking brightly illuminated plant-rich tanks with a normal fish community exhibiting no signs of illness; but that is not the Paro world. The more plants requiring nourishment you try to keep in a Paro tank, the less it is an optimum for you fish. Remember: they live in small slightly floating creeks in peat bogs of the primeval forest with high concentrations of humic substances.
As the temperature is concerned: I do not use any heaters in a room never colder that 21 degrees Celsius. Sometimes it’s 24 degrees. It should never exceed 29 degrees. Colder that 20 degrees is possible for quite long a time but not half of the year. In course if time the fish will become weaker and more prone to diseases.
Hello everyone,
I would like to add some notes to what Peter already said. Fast growing plants that would be able to clear the water in some less extreme setups, would probably change the water pH in to their favor. Many plants are able to change the surrounding environment in thin layers around their leaves and roots to manage the uptake of nutrients. That is the first problem. Maintaining low pH and low germ concentrations would be compromised.
The other problem that using some soil stuffed with nutrients would bring is that even if you are able to use some great soil with very high sorption capacity, the nutrients will always leach out of it. The sorption itself and of course releasing of the ions too is often dependent on the concentration of the specific ions in the surrounding medium. So simply said, you will not be able able to maintain low conductivity water with extremely low concentrations of calcium and magnesium and plenty other substances too. But your fast growing plants need them, you become a slave of the Liebig’s law of the minimum. I think Peter already said that, I just wanted to emphasize it.
The third problem is closely related to this. Paros live in flowing water that percolates through the masses of the organic matter. From this point of view, it is a very fresh rainwater at the very start of it’s cycle just stored in and slowly released from the peat like matter after getting down from the skies. If you do not make the water changes, something else than nitrogen may build up in the tank. Substances that we do not measure or we are completely unaware of. We know that there are substances that influence population densities and growth of animals in closed systems. What water changes do is that they simulate the natural flow and dilute such substances.
What about pistia, water lettuce? It has leaves in the air and no need to root in the substrate.
How does it compare to submerged water sprite for keeping the water clean?
And is it a plant that could alter the water chemistry too much like “normal” plants will?Hello! interesting discussion! And It makes clear some details!
Concerning plants: Salvinia minima and Ceratopteris grow very quick now in my tanks, but even extrem faster if I put them afterwards in a tap water tank of someone else.Soil, and Co2 plants ( I never used them) are for me an Armamo thing. Very large tanks with many plants and very, very few little fish.
Our small tanks without water change is for me like being closed in for months in a small room without fresh air!
And as Pawel writes, we don’t know what substances will increase in the water after some time. Our fish are specialists in an ecological corner with a very special, super-clean water…
[quote=”Jacob” post=4743]What about pistia, water lettuce? It has leaves in the air and no need to root in the substrate.
How does it compare to submerged water sprite for keeping the water clean?
And is it a plant that could alter the water chemistry too much like “normal” plants will?[/quote]I have loads of Pistia stratiodes. I’m actually thinking of getting rid of all of it, because it seems to look pretty for a while and then eventually either make a big mess or take over a tank.
It is also extremely iron-hungry. I have to fertilize the tanks it grows in fairly often or they become chlorotic and die (not parosphromenus tanks), and rob the other plants of iron in the process. As Zwerge said, Salvinia works very well. I have so much salvinia now that I have given fistfuls of it away to other hobbyists and even people who have small fountains and ponds outside their homes. I have never had a problem growing salvinia, and while it does respond to fertilization (as one would expect), mine does very well without it.
I have also had great success with frogbit; it seems to take some time to get used to the lower pH, but after that it just goes right back to making glossy, round leaves.
As for the topic at hand, the tank photo that started this thread certainly looks nice (and Finke is absolutely right about aquariums here in the US; people always seem to want to engineer problems away instead of looking to the inspiration of why we have glass boxes of fish in the first place; natural ecosystems.
And, the natural ecosystem for southeast asian blackwater fish is very acidic, with very low concentrations of important plant micronutrients such as magnesium, potassium, iron, and calcium. In order to correctly mimic the ecotope of Parosphromenus in captivity, we need to keep the levels of these micronutrients low, and because of that many plants simply will not survive in a proper Parosphromenus tank.
The tank in the photo at the start of this thread looks nice, but it’s probably not going to be the best for Parosphromenus.
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