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I think I have selected a male and female. They are in approximately a 5 gallon tank with some floating plants and sphagnum to bring ph down. pH is below 6.0, but I’m not sure how far. There is a small piece of pipe in the tank for a hide. The male has claimed the hide and nips at the female when she approaches it.
Unfortunately I think the male believes he is guarding eggs as there are some small air bubbles at the top of the tube. Of course, it is impossible that they are really eggs, but he is defending them and stressing the other Paro in the tank who is staying in one corner. Should I remove the hide or remove the other Paro or leave them be and let them sort it out? I don’t know for sure I’ve even picked a female, but it has no markings in the tail and fins.
The female isn’t stressed constantly, there are times when she turns to a solid color with minimal striping. But, she is often relegated to a corner.
Its always hard to say, – it could of course be another male, which would explain if the male is a bit hostile … however, it might also just as well be a female.
In my experience it could be that what you have done is putting together two fish which have been under less good conditions, – travel, shop and all that, – any female would not be ready to spawn yet.
The male however is eager and makes bubbles right away, and now he thinks the female should just be right on the spot 🙂 … which of course she is not.
She needs maybe a few more days, some more food or maybe she just need the male chasing her in order to get into a spawning mood.This could well be the scenario as well. Best thing to do is to really provide good dense hiding space for her / him and see what happens in the next days.
The fact that the male has already started building a bubble nest actually might be a good sign that the other fish is indeed a female. Im not so sure he would do that if it was a male, – he would still be chasing it, but not build a bubble nest.
And nipping at females is also a rather ‘male’ behaviour in order to get her in the mood 🙂I hope I’m not posting too much, but I’m just trying to be careful not to make too many mistakes with these. I can already see I need to change the hide. You can see a line of bubbles, but, unfortunately the tube is such a shape as to allow them to move up and out. The male is also in this photo, but because I used the flash he is already striped. The assumed female is the next photo.
🙂 we welcome all questions – we are just happy that you have found our homepage and that you want to learn about the parosphromenus species, – so just ask 🙂
I can see the point with the tube – its a good point, because that is a risk and once there’s egg in it they may float away which would be a real pity.
The image is almost certainly a female.
The female never really seemed to get comfortable, so I transferred both back to the original tank with the others.
I’m going to wait and see if a pair forms naturally and then separate them. I added some more hiding places in the original tank and the betta’s will be out tomorrow, tanks are already set up, just waiting for new filters to arrive.
I really believe they are still juveniles. The male never really colored up enough to be identifiable, so perhaps a few more months will make the difference in being able to tell species and gender.
Jennifer, Paros need between 3 and 6 months to grow and colour up; quite a longer time than many other fish. And they must be fed with a variety of good foods in order to accelerate that process. Baby Artemia are very good, but interchanged with Grindal or glassworms or small mosquito larvae or Moina is better. Daphnia do not contain many nutrials, but to feed them sometimes is not bad either.
Be patient! The males will become glorious!
They haven’t really been successful at catching the daphnia, so I had let off feeding them that. They primarily are eating blackworms, but I also use mosquito larvae when I find it. I do have a Moina culture, but I hadn’t tried it with them yet as I thought the moina were too small. But, I will go ahead and use them then. I will give Grindals a try, I would like something else to try to culture as the blackworms are very slow to culture.
Moina are really good food. But otherwise theres always the artemia nauplia, which I find is an excellent food.
[quote=”helene” post=2380]Moina are really good food. But otherwise theres always the artemia nauplia, which I find is an excellent food.[/quote]
I have never hatched those, so I should give them a try and see how it goes.
So far my fastest culture is the daphnia, I wish they had more nutritional value as they fill the tank quickly. The moina are a lot slower to produce for me.
Moina could faster reproduce than Daphnia, but often they do not. Try a small container with water not higher than one or two inches. They must sit densely there and assemble in clouds at the surface. If they swim solely around they will not reproduce properly.
No airing is essential. Then feeding on a weak solution of yeast, perhaps that helps.
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