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The Opallios just arrived.
I had one DOA in the bag but am pleased.
The young males show blue,red and black in the doral fin, Blue and black with a touch of red in the anal fin and red and black bands with a blue border in the caudal fin. I’m quite surprised to see colors immediately on unpacking. They are small. Certainly not Giant Red Sparkling Licorice Gouramis!! lol
A rough guess is 2 males 3 females.
I’m acclimating them now so will get a better description later. The most colorful male already shows better colors than the pics I’ve seen so far.
Sounds really good, I am happy for you – you have some very interesting species by now I think.
You might notice that our species page for p. opallios could use a few photoes so you are welcome to ‘spam’ us with beatiful photoes of your new fish 🙂
I am looking forward to it.Ted, what is DOA?
Your description seems to match with the description of opallios indeed. Of course it could be some other species with reddish parts, but there is some probability it’s opallios indeed.
I think, this is an important message for your fellow-americans to see that there are some more rare species available in the U.S. (because that is the biggest problem over there: most of your colleagues don’t know how to get these fish!) and the shipping does obviously has be done orderly and not harmed the animals very much.
I suggest you should mail this in our American forum too! Maybe the same sender has other species to offer, too.
The other thing is that this is likely to confirm what we knew already: that opallios is presently in trade in different countries, in Europe too. And: P. opallios is not very often in trade. And a third thing: We are definitely at a loss with good photos of that species. So, after some time, have a try!
I wish you success with your new fish. P. opallios is sometimes a bit delicate. I hope the fish you received are healthy and will develop well.
DOA means “dead on arrival”. They are being shipped across the country in not so good weather, although they do use the heat pacs.
Getting one DOA is enough to put a bit of fear in me. I will wait til tomorrow to try to get a good count of survivors, usually I have gotten very healthy fish, so this is an alert!
The males are indeed beautiful even now, can’t wait til they get comfortable
So far they do fit the Opallios description very well, and more color than the pics, so I will try my best to get some photos for you all in a few days.
Peter and Helena, thank you.
These Opallios are wild caught so I did inform the sender to take a bit more precautions in their catching and shipping. These little guys and gals have been through a lot. He did inform me that they have received approx 80 in their shipment. That is good for us but hopefully not ruining their secret collection areas.
Besides habitation destructions we also have the fish market destruction possibilities, and yet we need to rescue the species. If the shipper rec’d 80, hundreds + of wild caught must be being distributed to all markets.
I was able to work on a better deal (because of the rough shipping) so I will have a few more coming my way, which I hope to make available to others if the male to female ratio is good.
Of course, we should always think of the potential damage the aquarist hobby is responsible for. But as far as we know this in not one of the Parosphromenus problems.
Nearly all Parosphromenus in the zoo-trade are wild-caught animals. Nobody in Asia breeds the “difficult” fish of the blackwaters. Catching them is a work for poor people in the country. But they don’t catch in all seasons. It would be much too hard and troublesome. They concentrate on the after-breeding season when the waters abound with young. Of course, Parosphromenus are difficult to be caught even then (because they hide in the riparian grasses and the layers of leaves on the ground and don’t swim in the free water, but when the young have grown to half an inch or a bit more many are to be caught in waters which at other times of the year seem to be empty of them.
We have never heared of this deadly damaging a population; it would be much too hard to catch to that extent. The deadly dangers of Parosphromenus lie in the destruction of the rainforest and the exploitation of the peat soils by that palm-oil-plantations (and to a minor extent by chemical immissions and the construction of streets and settlements).
Every year thousands of young Parosphromenus of quite a few species are caught this way and some hundreds die in Asia already mostly short after having been caught and not properly cared for with fresh water. Many hundreds are shipped to other continents in more or less bad condition. Once a German wholesaler phoned us that he had just received 800 ornaticauda (a difficult species) and half of them were dead at that moment or nearly dead already.) We could save about 80 of them burt most died after two or three weeks because of the stress they had to endure.
Mostly, the commercial trade concentrates on large populations (as that of spec. Sentang or spec. “Blue line” on Sumatra). Most other species are uninteresting commercially. It’s a speciality if you get opallios or filamentosus, and you never get deissneri or allani.
There is only one way out for the aquarists, and that is breeding, breeding, breeding, and the distriution of the young to as many friends as possible. Each Paro-friend should breed his fish. Self-bred fish are more healthy than all that have been experienced the commercial martyrium.
Great and thanks again… then we are indeed on course with Parosphromenus…. its just the trade business loss has stunned me with species already on the brink.
There are some other losses our hobby creates.
O yes. That article by Matt Ford is very good indeed. The illustrations of every few sentences by a photograph are excellent. Some years ago we had a discussion among aquarists how to avoid the use of peat. And there are cheap and easy to collect natural things that allow to avoid the use of peat. Even the simple reduction of pH is possible by the use of phosphorus acid, for instance. If you use alder cones and leaves additionally for the humic substances you don’t need to buy that peat for gardneners or even (in the smallest of all packages) for aquarists.
Good news about helping to save some of the peat bogs, along with other good news:
I have at least 9 Opallios now, after working with the shipper, both males and female mix!! My camera is not working, and trying with the cell phone but not very good at all! It will be a while before I can pics now.
I just dropped the camera so will try once more tonight.
Here are 2 pictures for now of Opallios. Sorry but it is the best my old camera can do!
These are pis of a young male I received.Looks like the real deal, or at least something very similar, to me!
Awesome,keep posting! There is a great lack of pictures of paros in general, but virtually none of this species, so everything you do is a great job!Thank you Bartian, yes, these little fish do match all descriptions and I have no doubts now that they are Opallios. I’m not aware of any location variants so once again with retailers I cannot know where they are actually from.
I am trying new pictures almost every day and may have to borrow a better camera from friends.
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