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Hi there.
This is just a try to share my experiences, observations, experiments etc. with keeping and hopefully breeding P. nagyi.
Let’s see if it works within a forum-environment…
Wonderful – go forth and we will look forward to your postings. I am about to start a breeding effort with some P. Nagyi also.
PREFACE
I was thinking about keeping P. for quite some time, looking for any information available and, doing so, also finding my way to the P-P forum.
As I had no experience with such small blackwater fish, I decided to make first steps in this area when I found a Betta breeder in Leipzig / Germany. After some rather quick preparations at home (setting-up three 10L-tanks with a mix of rain and distilled water, elder cones and beech leaves I got 1.1 B. tussyae to start with.
Only a few weeks later I re-discovered a pet-shop I havent’t had visited for about ten years on the outskirts of Leipzig. And to my big surprise, this shop had some B. hendra in stock. So after only a month or so, I had two of the three small tanks inhabited with Bettas.
Around this time, Peter’s and Martin’s book arrived, giving me the input I had been looking for: I can only recommend bying this unique work.
And then everything went faster than expected: I had left my e-mail adress together with a wish list including not only several Bettas but also something like “all kind of Parosphromenus” at the shop, the guy in charge for the aquaristics department discovered P. nagyi on a distributor’s list, ordered ten fish – and mailed me as soon as they arrived (on a Thursday). I asked him not to sell any until I could check them on Saturday. So I had two days to prepare the thierd of my three tanks.
Then came Saturday – and I was nervous as a child around boxing day to see and get my first P. To be on the safe side with the species, I took “the book” with me to the shop. Ans what can I say? There were ten not to stressed P. nagyi swimming in one of the tanks. And from what I could see from the fins, it could have been 5.5. So I got me a net (At this shop, you are allowed to catch on your own!) and fished me what should be 3.3 P. nagyi. (I thought about getting all ten, but decided against due to the limited space I could provide.)
Back at home and after several hours of water mixing, all six fish went into the third little blackwater tank – and disappeared…
…just to be back at the front pane the next morning, taking the first food. Easy start in fact! 🙂
BASIC WATER CONDITIONS
no experiments so far!Bying distilled water and mixing it to rain water was okay for quite a while with the Bettas. But as only one rain barrell in a garden next to mine provided the neede quality (no bitumen roof, no decaying foliage), this was not feasible on the long run. So I decided to do the yob properly and get me (a) a R/O device and (b) a combined eletronical ph/TDS/Temp meter (Hanna Instruments).
raw tap water: pH 8.5, TDS >750µS
R/O water: pH 6.2, TDS 0.00µS
after treatment (with elder cones): pH around 5.8, TDS well below 30µSI think that’s okay for a start. – And at least my B. tussyae agree with me by producing a good number of
offspring! 🙂🙂 Sounds as a really good start for you. P. nagyi is a wonderful species. What colour is the coloured band in the tail ? There are two possible colours with p.nagyi – bluish or totally white ?
I am only a bit curious regarding your tank size – 10 liters to me is enough for a pair of paroes, and also even for their offspring for a while, but for 3.3 I would not think it to be enough.
At least you will definitely face some problems regarding fry growing up and you will also have to be doing really good waterchanges to keep a good quality of water.Also I really wondered about the b.hendra and b. tussyae, – do you keep those in 10 liters ?
I have b.coccina and they do much better in a bigger tank, – mine is in 60 liter for 4 🙂FEEDING…
After only a few days, I was sure that at six P. nagyi were less challenging than expected at least regarding feeding (and that my water conditions seem to fit).
In my opinion, the right food is one of the main issues to keep our fish healthy over a long time and hopefully make them spawn. So where other fish do not necessarily need it, for my Bettas and Paros I entirely rely on living food.
Having a garden, a balcony, and a cellar and with some fishless ponds nearby, this doesn’t mean a real effort. It’s more like doing a small harvest every now and then. 🙂
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At the moment I maintaine cultures of
- Enchytraeus
- Panagrellus
- springtails
- Asellus aquaticus
- larvae of day flies
- white mosquito larvae
- black mosquito larvae
- Cyclops
- small Daphnia
– which are great as a ‘power-food’ during winter times and before spawning; In my cultures, this species often goes alogn with what I think is
– or micro-worms: some sort of ‘spaghetti’ for fish babies, and
– which my Betta like to pick from the water surface.
In ponds in our local botanical garden I discoverd rich ‘hunting grounds’ of the following ‘specialties’, that are able endure in coldest water or even under an ice layer:
– with a size between 3 and 10mm you have to sort out a little bit. But they wont hunt after fry anyway, feeding from decaying foliage etc.
– no idea which species, but a rather small one
In addition, in the summertime, my son and I make it an adventure to go through the rain barrells of our garden colony to catch
and collecting their raft-like clutches, which then release smallest (2mm long?) larvae to my tanks, plus some
and
// to be continued! //
A bit off-topic, but to contribute to Helene’s question: I keep my Betta hendra pair in a 16 liter tank with very much floating plants, hanging roots, and leaf litter. Enough coverage for the female to hide if necessary. I have them since November, and the male now guards their third bubble nest/clutch at minimum. Young Betta in all sizes swim around – and this picture was taken today:
I have the strong impression that they’re doing quite well …. even in this small tank ….
And to get back to the main topic: The only paros I have which breed and breed and breed and never had any fry since over a year – are my P. nagyi ……………
Hi Helene.
I understand your doubts – and I share(d) them, too! Therefore, the decision to have 10L tanks (instead of say 25L) was not very easy to me. But as I wanted at least three small tanks in a cupboard-like housing, 75L+ of water seemed too heavy and voluminous.
And up to now, due to very regular water changes and conservative feeding, the 10L setup workx rather perfect even for the bigger Bettas!
The 13+ young B. tussyae are close to 1cm now, so the adults will have to move to my bigger living room tank for a rest soon enough. The 2.2 B. hendra already moved their – and the 3.3 P. nagyi were devided (1.1 and 2.2) onto two 10L tanks after a first couple showed up. And… But no! You will have to read my P. nagyi diary to find out more. 🙂
Michael
! MY FIRST NAGYI-FRY !
Last Saturday, I was fastening the film canisters (that used to float around) to the walls of my Paro and Betta tanks.
Coming to the tank with my dominant P. nagyi couple, where I hadn’t seen the male for quite some time, I checked the two canisters with the entrance in the direction of the front pane – and found them empty. But there’s a third canister floating directly against the front pane and not showing his entrance. So I carefully moved this canister away from the pane and slowly turned to have a look inside. And what shall I say: There’s the long time not seen male guarding some 15 to 20 already hatched fry not even leaving it’s cave due to this disturbancess… – Slowly, I moved the canister back into it’s old position and left the tank alone until yesterday evening.UPDATE February 28
Four days after finding the hatched fry, I thought about re-checking the canister. So I again slowly turned it by 180 degree – and found the male still in the cave. This time I could only observe about five larvae – but the nest was much larger than before!
[i]Do Paro males still rebuild and strengthen a nest after the fry has hatched?
Or do Paros couple in such short intervals that fresh eggs are placed in a cave where still some larvae are in?[/i]However, this time (after I accidentaly had destroyed their first cluth some weks ago) the fry has hatched – and is about to leave the cave. – Now I wonder, whether I should remove first the female and – after it left the canister – the male, too, in order to give both a rest and to make sure that they don’t go for their fry.
On the other hand, I would like to give it a try and to bring up the fry without removing the adults. For my B. tussyae this approach works rather excellent with the adults not a bit interested in their free-swimming offspring. But what about Paros? Should better I eliminate the risk? What do you out there think and what’s your advice here?Look in our Finke-Hallmann-book, and you will see that is a quite normal behaviour that males guarding a nest or larvae spawn again whilst the older larvae are still in the nest.
You can try to leave the old fish. We have often seen young develop in the same tank as the old are living in; I has cases where I caught about fifte or sixty young out of a ten liter tank some months later, and the parents have neever been removed. It’s clear that the following generations had no chance, but not since the parents ate them, but there older brothers and sisters.
But there is no guarantee for this. There are pairs or single males or females which eat their young. One never knows. But if you have many leaves on the ground, javamoss, other structures and a good layer of swimming plants, there is a great chance for at least some young to survive.
You must test it out with any new pair. If it happens to tolerate their young, it’s the easiest way of producing offspring.
Hello, Michael,
the issue “Do paros eat their fry” is something which interests me, too. I started a thread on this topic a few weeks ago.
I would not agree in general with Peter’s advice to observe each pair and then know which pair does and which pair doesn’t eat their fry – because some suddenly do it even if they haven’t done it before.
My quindecim left their fry of their first clutches totally undisturbed – and then – without any obvious reason – the female (not the male!) began to hunt and eat her own fry. In the thread mentioned above we suspected this behaviour to support the survival of the fittest (in this case the quickest and most watchful of fry) while the silly ones which moved absolutely carelessly in front of their mother’s mouth were eaten.I decided to leave the parents with their fry even if a part of the offspring do not survive. Be it as assumed – then the surviving fry are the most viable. There is another assumed advantage: Fry which grow up with their parents might learn certain things which they don’t when separated early. And for the numbers of fry ………… yes, we should attempt to breed the paros to distribute them to other paro friends ………. but let’s be honest: you always have too many offspring which do not find a new home – and then you get a problem with available space. So for me the advantage lies in only few but well grown young fish, raised in a situation as natural as possible. To prevent being eaten is one of the first things a young fish has to learn in captivity as well as in the wild – if not by the own parents, then by other fish in the environment. To artificially raise all fry – even the weakest ones – by preventing them from all possible dangers to me is not the way to obtain a healthy population, even in captivity.
March 4th
I couldn’t resist!: As it is my first fry, I decided to avoid the risk of the adults eating their own offspring.
So today I controlled the film canister again to see how far the fry would be: Several pigmented larvae “jumping” around on the canister’s bottom forming the back wall of the cave in the light of my headlamp.So I put a small (about 250 ml) plastic container into the tank – and very slowly emptied the cave with both male and larvae into the container. Luckily, the male was to upset to go after it’s fry so I could catch him out without additional urgency.
A first look into the container showed about 20 larvae searching for a place to hide – which I no added in form of some beech leaves, two elder cones and a halved film canister.
As the larvae already swam freely, I also gave some micro worms and a very small pinch of Sera micron into the container that now floated in the parent’s tank.
Since then, I twice a day change about 50% of the water by skimming it out of the canister with a small can and refilling it with water from the parent’s tank. Here, sometimes some larvae get sucked into the can, too, so that I have to empty the can into the canister again: The whole procedure needs some patience. – In addition, after each water change I again stir small amounts of micro worms and Sera micron into the water.
UPDATE March 13th
As far as I can see during the water changes (in the mornig and in the evening), no losses yet. So I guess the larvae find something to feed – although I haven’t observed hunting or eating so far. – Also, the small fish start to really swim around instead of “jumping” from wall to wall – making the water change even more a puzzle…
🙂 You are a brave man 🙂 … its very interesting. I always thought of course its possible when you are as careful as you are and think of all the complications that could happen.
But still, I also feel a litte bit like Stefanie, I would not at the moment want more fry than what I get in the normal way. But with a very rare species it could be important, so the experience you are doing is important for us all.
All the best of luck with the fry onward, hoping all continues to go well.
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