New Keeper from Portland, Oregon

[Shane Puthuparambil]

Hello,

My name is Shane Puthuparambil. I recently met Lawrence on a visit to Seattle, and I got to see his stunning Parosphromenus collection including species filamentosus, tweedei, etc.

I live very close to the Wet Spot Tropical Fish, and the import company The Cichlid Exchange. I am good friends with many of the employees and talk with the owner every few weeks.

They often get many species of Paros in. This past week they got P. bintan, origin unknown. I purchased a group of 6. I will photograph them and put them up for ID (as I have limited experience with keeping these fish). I will be picking them up tomorrow afternoon.

Is this forum generally active? Excited to learn from the top experts on here…

My background is in keeping fish from the genus Apistogramma (South American dwarf cichlids). I consider myself advanced with this group… they share many similar qualities with the genus Parosphromenus in regards to care and environment. Hopefully I can do well with the new fish I am getting.

Tell me more about yourselves! Or feel free to ask me questions.

Shane

[helene schoubye]

Hi Shane.

I would like to welcome you to this forum, – I am very happy to see you here, and glad to here that you have caught an interest in our small paro species.
I have had the interest and been committed to this project for many years now, – and is also a member of the Steering Group as well as webmaster.
I have seven species at home, – but in Denmark theres very far between people who share this interest, – so it is sometimes difficult, both to aquire and to also give on offspring etc. But then I have of course been lucky that Denmark is not too far from Germany, and Hamburg, where Bernd Bussler lives, – he is a fantastic source for our fish.

Your purchase of p. bintan is one of the more usual reports from trade. There are often p. bintan or more likely p.bintan like species – which is with or without location, – and most often we cannot really trust that the information given is accurate. Often the fish is difficult to determine precisely later on, but in many cases the fish can be beautiful and really worth while.
Often also, these uncertain purchases is the only source of requiring fish which people has, as only very few shops have them. If you know the owner there, you may talk to him about looking more closely at the import lists, – there might be species there which are more easily determined, such as anjunganensis, linkei and others. Its a great advantage to know the owner and to have someone be ‘on your side’ 🙂

Now, – you ask a question, is this forum really active ?
To this I will answer you – honestly, no, – not really. I will add …. most unfortunate.
I do not precisely know why.
Sometimes there has been much more activity, and mostly I also experience, that if someone asks a question, there will be answers, – but many seems to not really look in here regularly.
The Parosphromenus Project has grown quite a bit over the last years, and we do have many members, and we do get new members regularly. We also can say that some of our activities, such as private travels, new findings, contacts to institutions etc, – these things do develop.
But the forum part, – the active communication by people, and the real network creating seems to at least at the moment be at a ‘low’ point. I personally, at this present time, is really thinking a lot about how to change this, – but I dont have any good answers.
I do think that many members – unfortunately – finds facebookgroups to be more easy and fast to find answers, – and that facebook is more easy accessable than a regular forum.
Facebookgroups unfortunately does not accumulate knowledge in the same way as a forum, which is why we have hesitated to create one linked to this site.

🙂 … as you may understand, this question of yours has hit something which is on my mind a lot, and I wish I could say that we are a very active forum 🙂 … I cant.
Instead I would welcome you and say, – lets make it a more active forum 😉 … just ask if you have questions, and there will certainly be answers.
Also I can say, you can search in our forum, and you will that there has been many interesting debates over time.

[Dorothee Jöllenbeck-Pfeffel]

Hi Shane and Parosphr,

concerning the activity of this forum: someone has said, the aquaristic hobbyist has to be patient.
The fish swim, you try too keep them well, once or twice a year they breed if you are lucky and got good healthy fish…. there doesn’t happen so much everyday, so that, when the beginners questions are answered, there is not so much left to talk everyday.
But I think, thats the same in every Forum. In former times, when I began with Aquaristic, I often visited http://www.aquariumforum.de. Thats a rather busy Forum (also not all the time) but the more than our forum here is just quantity not quality. Indeed the majority of posts are beginner questions.

And facebook – I am in one group, the best was that I got the tipp that it is possible to send fish overnight with Go! express (just Germany and Austria) via “shipping and more” . For me the facebook groups are no real concurrence for this forum.

[helene schoubye]

🙂 – good that you think so, Dorothee.
But we dont agree. To me its different because of the nature of this forum, being connected to the Project of the creating awareness of the endagered species. Because of this I see it as more than a forum about fish-keeping, etc. – and for this reason I wish there was more activity.
To me, the strength of a project such as ours also relies a lot on the activity and networking of a group of people with the same aim.
But as you say, maybe there are times when activity needs to be at a low point and may return.
Oh, and I should remember to say 🙂 …
Kind regards Helene (forgetting that I am logged in as parosphr)

[Peter Finke]

I think that we should not forget that this site is more than a forum. (Anyway: there are four forums, and I admit that some are still more quiet than this. I should prefer more activity, too).
But the main point I have is that to large an extent this is an educational site. We get only few informations on the learning effect of the many texts that are to be found on the menue at the left side of our opening page. Although I should prefer – as Helene does – more forum activity, we may not forget that our aims are not simpy to be equated with that of aquaristic sites.
And by the way: activity is not quality. From our project’s point of view the emergence of a new enthusiast in the U.S. or anywhere in the world supporting our ambitious aims is in my view more valuable than most superficial wordings in some very active forums.
Peter Finke

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