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Please folks 🙂
Of course we can be serious or joking, – I would be sad to have this label put on our forum that theres no space for humor 🙂 …
What I think is that some of us are really used to writing in forums, and use it more fluent and personal, – I for example have been around these forums for ages, and I know sometimes one can almost use it as a kind of ‘skype’ thing and post answers and jokes and comments … but not all people do this, or are used to this. And thats all right too. For some it may be more a ‘serous matter’.
Its a balance of things I think. And I have also in my time learned how to ‘read between lines’ when communicating on the internet, and in forums and so, – and it is really quite a skill. Humor on the net is actually sometimes difficult 🙂 …And I will add one more thing which I have learned from my many years on forums that it was really helpful for me to always always think twice before getting annoyed … because as Sverting says there are so many ways one can make a mistake regarding what the intension of a message is … language could be one of them, but other things too…
Anyway, dont take this as a ‘sneer’ 🙂 either … just a thought, and just keep on bringing all your different interesting and wonderful posts and photos …
The really important thing here is that we keep communicating about the fish we are so fasinated by ..Hello to you all!
I just thought it might be nice to show some photos of my “mysterious girls” from the beginning of this thread. They are fully grown now, and I think I’ll show you some pictures of the adults. I have only three of them by now – I am ashamed to say that one of them got lost during moving to a new tank ……….. could’nt find her anymore despite of looking through all leaf litter and fibres I removed from the old tank ….
They have grown to very large, stout paros. Similar in size to my adult quindecim female but not as slim as quindecim, with a much higher body profile.
To me the fish look slightly different – so I think the one in the middle has noticeably long fin rays in the dorsal fin, which surmount the upper margin of the fin. Here another picture of this female:
Another female shows a black dot at the hind end of the dorsal fin, not very distinctive, but still visible:
I am very interested in what you think of the girls now ………… 😉
Stefanie, it’s difficult to compare the three fish since on the photos they are not to be seen equally perfect and from the same angle and pespective. I am unable to say that they are different concerning the pointedness of the dorsal fin or some markings in the one but not in the other individual. You could observe all this by no means better in front of your tank than we seeing these pictures. There are differences to be seen, but they lie within the range of individual divergence of a single species, I should say.
However, it is clear that the pictures show very well developed females with the potential to spawn, and it is a pity that they have no male(s) to do so. The blackish spot that you speak of and that is, according to your words, better to be seen in one individual only, is by no means an indication of P. sumatranus, as one could think (you did not indicate that), since it is much more prominent in that species (or even in allani), whereas the body structure is clearly different, especially in sumatranus. The short filament (= ca. 1 mm) at the end of the sumatranus-caudal is missing, too.
The fine pictures again illustrate that we are nearly unable to distinguish between the females of many Parosphromenus-species that are close to bintan, say e.g. spec. “blue line”, spec. Sentang, spec. Dabo, spec. Dua, but also alfredi, rubrimontis, harveyi or opallios, even female of nagyi of the variant from Cherating or Cukai or Pekan Nenasi (not the classical form of the first description from Kuantan!). It is very likely that they belog to that variant that was imported at that time when you received them. On the other hand we are (if experienced!) are sometimes able to recognize females of species that are more or less near to the bintan-type, as e.g. filamentosus, phoenicurusor tweediei, and the true deissneri.
If you still remember or have a description of that situation and if you still have male form that import, I should try toy pair one of the females with one of that males. We really don’t know how males react to females of not exactly their own species or form, but a close relative. Without exact genetic information, we have nearly no information about the measure of closeness or distance that plays a role there. So we don’t encourage people to mix potentially different animals clearly. But in your case it might be justified to try it if you have males that may stem from that import and if you are able to do a controlled experiment in a separate tank and we could see whether it works at all or not. And then we can discuss the outcome. Without that we cannot be sure about anything. Having done that maybe we can’t either, but we have more information. It could be that we can presume it’s species xy, or not.
So, have a controlled try, if you can.
Hello, Peter,
thanks for your extensive response. I am afraid, I do not know anything about the origin of the fish. I got them from a Czech dealer who claimed they came from “Asia” (how astounding!). He didn’t respond to my further questions ….
So I think I have no male with which I could try as you suggested.
But something occurred in the last hours which I would like to show you. I had the tank with the fish in another room for a while, but I took them back to my working room a few weeks ago. Now I can observe them more closely – which I did this afternoon, and made some photos.
Don’t blame me for bringing up the old question again – but look at these photos:
Is it possible that females show sexy eyes when chasing other females? Is this observed not only in courtship, but in aggressive behaviour, too? This one on the pictures is the one which was in question from the beginning – having a rather dark caudal fin colouration. The fish is sitting beneath some leaves near a bough most of the time. There is no cave in the tank – because it’s inhabited by females only. I now put in a cave – to see what happens………..
(Please excuse it if my photos are not quite good – my camera has a serious defect, showing broad bars in strange colourations and disrupted pictures. I show only the best pictures I can get now)
Same question again – me having been completely sure to have three females in the last months. And now this….
The fish has occupied the cave, coming out from time to time to chase the same female (the third one doesn’t dare to show a single fin … She hides and is nowhere to be seen).
In the last hour I have tried to detect similarities to forms and species (looking through the illustrations of the new paro-books of Finke/Hallmann and of Linke). Not very successful …..
A few times the fish showed something like a display towards the female:
There is no iridiscent colour to be seen. The dorsal and anal fin show a very dark chestnut colour, looking almost black when in the “mood”:
Both fins show a black seam on the outer margin, in this picture to be seen in the anal fin::
The caudal fin shows a lighter band:
Here another “chase”, poor quality, but showing the sexy eyes and very dark fins of the questionable fish:
I can not say that I have a suspicion what form or species this might be. The fin colouration – chestnut without iridescence, but not anjunganensis. And as I said – these are no small, graceful paros. I must confess that to me the body shape is much stouter and sturdier than in any paro I have seen (most of them on photos).
And the question still (or again) is – male or female? I have never heard about a female being so dominant that she even shows sexy eyes, besides an unusual dark colouration, while chasing another female (and chasing only one of the two further females living in the tank).
What do you think?
We have seen dominant females of several Paro-species in situations where males were missing displaying reduced colouration of males. To me, this was very obvious in case of a tweediei-female which adopted all fin colours of tweediei-males in a reduced form. Even sexy eyes were to be seen (in a reduced form), and she sometimes stayed for minutes in a cave. I was sure she was a female only because the male had died and she had spawned with him before.
So, I suppose we have a similar behaviour in this case. A dominant female tries to play the role of a male, but that does not work, of course. But we shall see. I cannot exclude a subdominant male or even a new form, although botz is unlikely. It would have all the time and possibility before to develop normale male colouration and behaviour. If a proper cave is missing, they take an improper one (below leaves or algae-paddings).
By the way: Stefanie’s fish remind me at the most of Parosphromenus gunawani, a bintan-like form from county Jambi on Sumatra, formerly called spec. Danau Rasau. It’s the body form which is similar, rather high-built and generally stout and strong. Sumatra was the most-exploited region in Paro-land during the last years. P. gunawani was imported twice privately first (by our friend Horst Linke) and I received some pairs from this import about six years ago. I spawned them with great success, but – alas! – I lost all fish by an Oodinium-attack.
Thank you, Peter, for your estimation of the situation.
[quote=”Peter Finke” post=2818]
By the way: Stefanie’s fish remind me at the most of Parosphromenus gunawani, a bintan-like form from county Jambi on Sumatra, formerly called spec. Danau Rasau. It’s the body form which is similar, rather high-built and generally stout and strong.[/quote]Yes, you are right – it’s what I think everytime I see the well known picture of P. gunawani. It’s not the colouration – but the body shape is almost exactly the same.
Regarding colouration – there is one form in Horst Linkes newly edited book on labyrinth fishes, which shows a very similar colouration to my “fish in question”: P. “Palangan”. Here it’s the body shape and size (only up to 3,5 cm) which do not fit.
No matter if male of an unknown form or female with hyperdominant behaviour: it’s absolutely interesting!
Hello,
I have now for longer not been active in this forum – which doesn’t mean that I haven’t been busy looking for my paros 😉 . They are all well, I have quite a few offspring of my quindecim, few of my nagyi and rubrimontis (and many of my Betta hendra …). And tomorrow I will get pairs of P. allani and P. harveyi and a female for my single pahuensis male – which I am really looking forward to!
I would like to tell some news about my “unknown girls”.
I had only male offspring of my P. nagyi “Pekan Nenasi”, – and neither found someone interested in buying only males, nor found someone willing to sell the suitable females to me (there seems to be a surplus of males of this form of P. nagyi everywhere).So I put one male into the tank with the two females of unknown origin and species. The male nagyi displayed at once – and the females responded. But I kept them together for more than a year and never saw a clutch or found any fry (which actually was nothing I hoped for – don’t get me wrong!).
In the meantime I sold my young males – all but one: I still have the male in the tank with the unknown females. Now I finally succeeded in getting a female P. nagyi from Pekan Nenas for this male – and so I emptied the tank yesterday and put the two females and the male nagyi each in separate tanks.
I didn’t expect any other life in the old tank – but, as I always do – I closely inspected the ground in shallow water before totally pouring it out.
You already know what I want to tell: There were 4 fry ………… approx. a few weeks old.
I succeeded in catching them – and now try to raise them in a separate tank.It was really not my intention to produce hybrids of unkown origin – I didn’t really expect the fish to produce viable fry and if, I expected the fry to be eaten.
But now that they are there I will try to raise them and maybe – if there are males among them – it will be possible to get a hint of which species their mothers belong to. Maybe the males will show an intermediate colouration ……… it might be easier to tell aberrant characters from a nagyi male than from some other paro males (e.g., nagyi show no red colouration – so red colouration will be highly conspicuous).I will report about the development of the fry – if you are interested.
I just got a private note from Peter Finke who drew my attention to the fact that I wrote something misleading about the new fish I will get tomorrow.
So – it’s not P. allani which I will get, but P. aff. allani “Lundu”. Sorry for this incorrect information.
Further Peter recommended to feed the fry to bigger fish ……….. 🙁 ……… because raising possible hybrids might cause chaos.
I think I will not do this – chaos can only arise if one implies that I do not keep track of what happens in my tanks or – much worse – intentionally mix (or sell!) fish which are hybrids or of uncertain species or origin. Seen from this angle I shouldn’t have kept the females of unknown species at all ………. then no one should keep fish with unknown species or origin. An intentional or unintentional confusion can always be implied.
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