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‘ello all! I just wanted to ask some questions about specific aspects of paro care that I had not definitely acquired from my own searches. Here’s my questions:
1 – In a 10 gallon tank, how much water would a licorice gourami owner want to change each week on average?
2 – I understand that Paros are obligate live food consumers. How large does the food need to be before an adult paro will consume it? Will they take microworms and/or vinegar eels?
3 – What is roughly the maximum TDS (total dissolved solids) that would be permissible in a paro tank?Any responses would be most welcome.
Hi there!
1 – The best would probably be to change 5-10L a week. Less is fine, more would not be good.
2 – They’ll happily eat frozen food. Some specimens even accept dried granules, altough that’s highly exceptional. Paros will eat anything from artemia nauplii to big fat mosquito larvae, if it moves, it’s food.
3 – I have no idea about TDS, but I try to keep my tanks below 50µS. My RO-unit gives 6-10µS, and my extremely soft tap water around is like 200µS, for reference. This is not really an absolute value, since they’ll also survive in tap water. In fact, Parosphromenus are very hardy fish, when given a tank of their own. They won’t breed, however, in tap water. Is has to be very soft and acidic for the eggs to develop and hatch.
Oops…gave the value in gallons! Forgot about litres entirely…sorry. Hapilly I can (roughly) convert between the two. Incidentally, my tap water has a TDS of about 173 (I’m not quite sure how to type that unit you put in…). The reason I asked about the TDS value was because I desired to reduce this to about 87 by mixing it with distilled water, but if that is still too high I can just go the distilled route.
Mostly due to price…I’m going to be asking my mother (who is a couponaholic) to look for some distilled water coupons to push that cost down a bit. Currently, in American currency, if I change just under 4 litres a week of pure distilled water, it would cost about $52, or 38.24 euros. I’ll also be checking to see if some nearby stores have RO units, which should be somewhat cheaper.
€10 a liter? Are you sure you asked for water, not liquid diamond?
Better get yourself a RO unit then, or try collecting rain.
Doesn’t it rain in the US? Many Paro-friends in Europe use pure rainwater (only made more acid) with best results.
I meant the yearly cost…the single 1 gallon (3.78 litres) bottle usually costs about 1 U.S dollar, or roughly .74 euros.
And yes, it rains. In fact, I live far enough north that it also snows…a lot 😆 …which gives me an idea where most of my water is going to come from. During winter I will try to collect as much snow as I can in buckets and store it in a large bin or bins with peat moss at the bottom once it melts. I have friends who would appreciate me depriving their lawns of a sizable chunk of their snow, so this should be relatively easy to accomplish without annoying anyone.
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