The new guy, looking for P. ornaticauda group

[Benjamin de Rooij]

Hi European Parolovers,

I’m the new guy in town, from the Netherlands, fallen in love with the Paro species.
Why is it always the difficult to find fish that we feel attracted to?

I’m looking for a group of P. ornaticauda to care for and if all works out like I am hoping, breed with.
They seem to be impossible to find in the Netherlands, but my mind is set to finding them one way or another.
I would prefer to find a breeder that could help me out, as there are not that many left in the wild.
Anybody in or close to the Netherlands that can help me out?

[helene schoubye]

Hello bderooij

Thank you for joining the forum here, – I also have recieved your request via the distribution mail. You will recieve an answer from Bernd Bussler in Hamburg.
You are perfectly right to think that the best thing is to get in contact with a breeder, – unfortunately again, in the netherlands at this moment I am not aware of any nearby you.
But in Hamburg it would be possible if that is not too far away for you. Bernd will write to you about that.

Another point which I would mention to you, is that if you do not have the experience with paros yet, – it is not adviseable to start with p. ornaticauda, as this is by far the most difficult species of all the species. Even experienced breeders have a hard time keeping these.
So there are many other species which is much more suitable and equally attractive for a person beginning with paros.

Many kind regards Helene Schoubye

[Benjamin de Rooij]

Thank you for your reply, Helene.

Bernd has indeed answered me and I am already trying to arrange transport to Hamburg in the near future.
He indeed told me that the ornaticauda is not the best choice for a starter.
I am indeed a beginner with Paro’s although I have kept and bred many different fish in the past.

Bernd has advised me to go for the allani and as you people here are the experts I am following this advice.
My tank is up and running, so I hope to have everything arranged in the coming 1 or 2 months.
Hamburg is quite the trip, around 3,5 hours by car, but for this beautiful species I am willing to make that trip. My brother has offered to drive me, we’ll make a day out of it 🙂

Kind regards,
Benjamin

[helene schoubye]

🙂 Good.

In terms of transport, I can tell you that you are one of the lucky people, – only 3.5 hours !!

Some people go for much longer than that to find paros.

[Benjamin de Rooij]

I’ll consider myself lucky then, but it’s the first time I’ve traveled that long to acquire anything 😉
Actually, it’s the first time I will go abroad to buy something 🙂

Thanks already for existing, without you people I would probably have bought ornaticauda through my fish store (they say they can order them) and would have had a massive disappointment.
Then again, the chance they would’ve actually had them is small, as right now they have a few paro’s there identified as deisneri, and even my untrained eye can tell they are not 😉

[Rafael Eggli]

Hi,

Its great to hear that you decided to go for harveyi! You would most likely have been strongly disappointed but paros can really be managed with some planning and also learning by doing.

What orther fish have you bred? Are you familiar with blackwater tanks?

I hope you will enjoy the trip to Hamburg. Its definitely worth it and Bernds breeding station is simply impressive. If you have any further uncertainties about it, feel free to ask!

Greetings Rafael

[Benjamin de Rooij]

Thank you, Rafael,

Actually I am going for the allani.
My tank is a Borneo biotope and I would like to keep it as correct as possible,
I have been planning this tank for over a year, but up until recently I couldn’t manage to create an account here, for some reason it was rejected or didn’t go through. I e-mailed the admin but didn’t get a reply.
I had ornaticauda on my list, but Bernd told me that was going to be a disaster, so I followed his guidance.
He came up with allani first and then harveyi but since they are from peninsular Malaysia I think I will stay with allani.
Maybe that will still change but I guess I will see when I visit Bernd in Hamburg. My brother is driving, we’ll have a long overdue brothersday 😉

I have never bred in a breeding setup, nor will I do so with the Paro’s, as I love the idea of a natural environment.
In the past I have bred many live bearing fish, as well as a good amount of barbs, Corydoras and labyrinth fish. In my community tank that I have since four years I have had succesful offspring from Corydoras paleatus and Trichogaster chuna.

This tank is my first blackwater tank, I have wanted one for a long time but never had the opportunity to do it the right way so I didn’t do it at all.

For the Paro’s I will ofcourse take more care, and move any free swimming fry to a floating setup inside the big tank, so they will have a chance to grow up and I will try to distribute the fish to other enthusiasts.
Maybe in the future (if my wife agrees to it, the new tank took me about a year until she agreed 😉 ) I will make a rack setup with 2 or three different Paro species as I have completely fallen for these amazing little creatures.

I will certainly stay in touch, even though the community here doesn’t seem to be very active, I have learned a lot from the topics that are already here.

[Rafael Eggli]

Hey,

Sorry, haha I was wrong with the species 🙂

Well that sounds great! I also try to keep the paros in natural environments with plenty of wood and leaves. I have made the experience that in such a tank as long as it is large enough you dont even have to isolate juveniles to raise them successfully. Of course some are going to disappear and usually as long as there is a bunch of young fishes no new babies will survive because of food concurrence between the larger younsters and the newly hatched. Also I often only realise there is fry when they are already reasonably large and out of the most difficult days. Some 5mm fish do not need isolation from the olders since they are too big and can flee pretty well from potential cannibalistic tankmates. I am looking forwards to reading from your experiences.

Yeah the forum has bevome quiet in the past months. But I think there are still plenty of people reading and i. The near future I guess some of the results from the meeting at Hamburg from the past weekend will appear here so I am confident there is going to be more activity

[Benjamin de Rooij]

So I’m not the only one not having a 20 or 30 liter tank for the Paro’s? That’s great! 😉

This is the tank I want to keep them in, it’s 240 liters. There is going to be some smaller fish with it and I was hoping to keep Betta albimarginata along with the Paro’s but Bernd advised me not to since they will probably eat all the fry.
I might reconsider those, then.
I still have a bit to think about everything, the tank won’t run away!

I hope to see more people here and learn from all of you, even though I have had aquariums for quite a long time I still do not consider myself an expert, especially not with these special species.

[helene schoubye]

I think its a beautiful tank, compliments to that.
It is a really big tank for parosphromenus, – and the disadvantage of that is that although breeding may take place, it will be really difficult to manage. Feeding the fry for one will be very difficult, you will not at all be able to target any paro fry with food. And food you will add will be so small that the fry wont really have a chance to find it.
Secondly, although I believe that paros actually thrive well in bigger tanks and also thrive in small flocks, – they will dissappear in this size tank.

As you may have found here on these pages, – we most often advice people that the idea of having paros is not for the purpose of display. Being so rare and threathened in nature we have an obligation to attempt to breed them, and for this its too big really.
Once you have many, – which also happens, – as I have for example with linkei at the moment, having perhaps 100, and with difficulties in finding other people who need them, – it makes perhaps some sense to also have paros in a ‘display’ tank. But I would then always keep at least 3 pairs seperated for breeding, so that I will never be in the situation where I suddenly have no fish left, – even if a disaster happens in the big tank.
My biggest tank for paros would be 60 liter.

[Benjamin de Rooij]

I understand the reasoning behind this. The idea is to put a few ‘caves’ in the tank, I was looking at savu pods since they look very natural and even help manage water quality the same way catappa leaves do.
Once I notice spawning has taken place and the eggs have come out I will put the cave in a floating container to keep it in the same water quality and temperature so I can easily feed the fry and raise them.
I know this is not the prefered way, but I think it is worth a try.
Once I am fully comfortable with the species I would like to build a rack in a quiet room in the house and breed one or two different species there.
I have had a few smaller tanks in the past and always had trouble keeping the waterquality good enough.

If I don’t manage to breed the fish in the larger tank I will take them out and place them in smaller tanks sooner, but this will take some convincing at home as well 😉

[Rafael Eggli]

Hi
Well deah that tank is huge for paros… we know from some reports that such an idea can work but not necessarily with breeding. One of the points that seem important to me is the idea of keeping other species with the paros. This I would not advise you to do or at least not in the beginning until you have made experiences with breeding and more importantly raising paros. Other fish such as boraras are very active in hunting food. Paros are not. Sometimes the artemia or whatever you might want to feed seem like they had to swim into their mouth before they will catch it. Of course there is a certain hunting instinct but the smaller and quicker fish are likely to eat everything before the paros even start feeding.

Nevertheless this is a beautiful tank!

[Benjamin de Rooij]

I get it, and there will be a breeding station in the near future, if it doesn’t work out in the large tank they will move to a dedicated tank rather sooner than later.

[helene schoubye]

I think I am reading between the lines, that you may not think it is easy to keep the small tanks – and I admit, with other species I may also have had the experiences of endless problems with waterquality, too much food, etc etc – but really in paro-aquaristic you will find that it is not really near as problematic.
Breeding paros mean you have one tank with two (very small) fish, male and female. You dont feed of course dry food, or frozen food, – you feed live food, and you dont feed very much (thats an important point of course). Paros dont need a lot of food. So you dont have heeps of too much food rotting. Even the fry, you feed them microworm for example, – in a small tank they will find the microworms even if you dont overfeed the whole tank.
If you need to change some water, you use a small tube, you dont of course vacuum the bottom at all, you change water carefully and its fine.
In a small tank once you see the male in the cave with the eggs, you can more easily catch the female out carefully, and then the male with stay with his duties untill the eggs have developed and after a week and a half, he will no longer be needed.
From that point on, even in a small 12 liter tank, you will think you have no fry at all. You dont see them, for weeks perhaps, they are that small. But they are probably there, – and you just keep adding a little bit of microworms, – and after a few weeks or even before, a little bit of artemia. Perhaps after two weeks one day you suddenly spot one 2 mm. fry sneaking out to get an artemia.

In a big tank, – you will never see the fry. They may of course survive, a few, – then you will suddenly in two months time see a 1 cm long fish, and you will be quite surprised, because you were certain there werent any.
Perhaps you can take out the cave from the bigger tank and transfer to a smaller, perhaps. I would think that was a risky operation.
And 🙂 … I dont want to continually take away your optimism, but to catch a paro in 240 planted or decorated tank — :S :dry: :whistle: …

I would – in your case – as you are getting fish from Bernd, have a seperate certain pair, put these into a small tank, – if you have no space you can have them on top of the big tank 🙂 .. I do that because of lack of space. Try with the rest in the big tank and see how it works there. Then when you have fry from the couple, put the pair also in the tank if it works well.

Kind regards Helene

[Benjamin de Rooij]

Basically what you all are saying is: Don’t buy paro’s if you’re going to put them in a 200 liter tank?

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