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Stefanie — some nice photos particularly the last one. A bit of clarification if you would … you state bambus cane in your comments,is that the same as bamboo cane? Perhaps this is just a translation issue? I have not seen comments about using bambus previously on the forum. We have considerable amounts of bamboo that grow locally.
Oh, I’m sorry – it’s my mistake. German and English beautifully mixed …… at least in my head.
Yes, Bambus in German is bamboo in English. The hollow canes make good caves for many fishes – my Pseudosphromenus like it, and some Badis (e.g, singenensis) species, too.
The bamboo has to be completely dry. If you cut it just behind the leaf nodes, you get a cave which is closed at one end. Before putting it into the tank, you have to water it until it sinks – or rather a bit longer.
Even though they are really not of best quality, I would like to show you some pictures I made this morning of my courting nagyi pair. Corresponding to the thread on territorial behaviour describing “moody colourations” I thought these pictures of nuptial colouration might fit ….
wonderful photoes again, Stefanie.
We should use them in some connection – maybe an article ‘spawning step by step’ 🙂Ok, stone me to death for showing unsharp photos again ……………. but I had to show you this “black gold”:
Imagine how these little males glow in the dark brown water of their home habitats, catching every sunbeam to impress their females …………….
I have shown many pictures of the displaying male/courtship behaviour in the past ……….. but none of some fry. That’s due to the lamentable fact that there have never been any young from this pair of P. nagyi. They are the first paros I’ve got, they mate constantly and have clutches – but no fry at all. I changed tanks, changed water parameters – with no visible effect.
Now I would like to tell you a funny story: By the end of last year I kept them in a 25 liter-tank which I provisionally divided in two parts by sliding in a vertical glass pane. The two parts of the tank had different sizes – one about one third of the tank, the other two thirds, consequently. The partition was not completey close, there were small gaps of a few milimeters – which was intended! In the smaller part I put some freshwater shrimps (Caridina simonii), in the bigger part my pair of P. nagyi. I wanted to provide the adult shrimps with shelter from the paros to enable a good reproduction – and hoped that the very young shrimp offspring would pass through the very small gaps into the paro part of the tank to provide the paros with a shrimp meal now and then. That’s to outline my intentions.
I can not say if it worked properly or not – the shrimp lived happily in their part of the tank, the paros bred and bred …. and no young.
One day I watched the shrimp side of the tank – and saw this:I saw this young fish once, had just enough time to take some photos – and never saw it again. It can only be an offspring of my nagyi pair – they were the only paros which lived in this tank, and I generally do not move water plants or so from one tank with young to another – to avoid “importing” fry of a different species.
After a while the paro part of the tank became “dirty” (the shrimp side in contrast as clean as can be!!). I put the paro pair in a fresh tank and removed the dividing pane in the old tank to give the shrimp more space and enable them to clean the whole tank. And I put in 4 Boraras urophthalmoides which were left from a bigger swarm.
From time to time I thought what might have happened to the young fish I had seen once and never again. I believed it to be dead because I would have expected it to show without fear with the Boraras swimming around, if it was still alive.
Last week I watched the shrimps and Boraras and suddenly found myself eye to eye with a well grown young paro. Again – just enough time to take a (bad) picture – and he was gone. I felt like the persons who claimed to have seen the Yeti or Bigfoot – they say they saw it clear and sharp but only once for so short a time that no one believes them.So – here’s the one and only picture of the one and only Yeti offspring of my P. nagyi:
😉
Apart from the good news about the one offspring, I think it also gives you the answer to why your nagyi pair do not ‘breed’ with many fry …
It seems to me that the way for the fry to survive seem to be the fact that it was in the shrimp tank away from the parents, so I would suspect that the parents might – or the female might – go after their own fry…
Its sounds weird why they should, but it does happen..
If they breed again, I think I would take away the female as quick as possible and see if that gave more successYes, that’s what I thought, Helene. But I think it’s him who eats the eggs. Remember my posts concerning the first clutch of this pair which suddenly vanished.
The tanks are very densely grown, I always care for a patch of java moss or Lomariopsis covering the cave so that very young fry can immediately hide when they leave the cave. I don’t think that even the hungriest female would be able to catch absolutely all of their fry. She would have to hang around the entrance of the cave to get them all – and she is not allowed to do this, the male won’t let her stay near the cave. Remember my thread about my quindecim female eating her fry ………. their tank is bigger with more open space – and not even then she is able to get all young fish, there are still enough of them growing to adults.
I suppose that the nagyi male eats the eggs (or the freshly hatched young still hanging in the cave) and now and then misses one egg or larva. That was the Yeti’s chance………… 😉With other species, cichlids – angelfish in particular, we often pull the eggs and artificially hatch them. I have just searched the site and I find no reference to attempting this practice. Has it been attempted and was there any success?
🙂 Stefanie, it may be as you say – probably the male, and probably early on in the proces.
Bill, I think it has been done and is quite as possible as in other cases if you have the knowledge about it.
Bill, it has been done but with little success. The person who has the utmost experience with his is Günter Kopic (who has written an article in the AMAZONA-issue on Parosphromenus, too).
The problem is the care of the eggs. If the male is missing you have to do measures to replace him. Simply leaving the eggs as they are results in nearly any case with a complete loss. There is an extreme danger of funghi. If one egg is infected,it is only hours that the next and the whole clutch is. Therefore, the most important thing is to view the clutch closely several times a day and pick out any egg which seems to show any signs of infestation as early as possible. You need good light for this, but the Paro-eggs don’t like that at all. It enforces the risk of being struck by funghi.
Second, since that is normally done in small vessels with a small amount of water only, the necessity of frequent water change is urgent. The new water should have the exact consistency as the old; Paro-eggs don’t like to experience even slight changes change of pH or minerals. Adult fish are much less sensitive, but the egg-stadium is the most sensitive part of a Paro-life. Nearly all our measures we take in Paro-tanks are taken because we want to see the fish spawning and caring successfuly for the eggs and have a milieu safe to the very young larvae.
Third, you cannot achieve the result of developing eggs without using a substance against funghi. Kopic used Acriflaviniumchlorid = Trypaflavin, sold in that times as “Cilex”-tablets (in Germany). Today, there are other substances, too. But the dose is the problem; you do not want to set new risks to the eggs, but you do. Kopic had his remarkable pioneer results in Paro-breeding by utmost care, only. And it included many losses nevertheless.
To sum it up: Let the male adult Paro care for his eggs is by far the safest and easiest method. I he doesn’t do this carefully you have to try it yourself, but then this will be a laborious and nevertheless risky undertaking. When the larvae are free-swimming in the cave you can remove them or the male and things become easier. But in the egg-stadium it is extremely risky and time-consuming to replace the father-fish. His permanent inspections of his clutch are very effective indeed. His eyes are adapted to tiniest things disturbing the life of his offspring. He sees any early signs of infestations and he efficiently picks out the individual egg that is affected. Mostly there are some in their early days. It’s quite normal; nature has found methods to cope with this.
By the way: All this is much more easy with Danio- or Apistogramma- or most Characid-eggs. It is the special adaption to the blackwater milieu that make things difficult. The adult fish endure many smaller mistakes, but the eggs do not. That’s the problem.
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