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Peter invited me over here from IGL where I had posted to ask for paro IDs, so hello! Just thought I would post a bit about my semi self-sutaining Paro setup.
As a bit of background, I set this up because I’m frequently away from home for 5-6 weeks at a time, and wanted an aquarium I could just leave on it’s own for this length of time. As such it is entirely pragmatic and practical in it’s design, and is not intended as a closed system, biotope ‘simulation’ or whatever.
Neither is this particualary new or innovative, pretty much all the ideas were stolen from somewhere or other. However, it does all work, so might be of interest to anyone considering a similar setup.
[B]Specs:[/B]
3’x1’x3′ 10mm glass aquarium, open topped
300W heater
70W metal halide light 2 feet above water surface (8 hours/day)
Small, heavily throttled powerhead providing very slow water movement to help prevent surface biofilm
[B]
Hardscape:[/B]
John Innes compost (unmineralised) cut 50/50 with sand, with pure sand cap
Some rocks, and locally collected heather twigs[B]Emergent plants:[/B]
Echindorus, water pickerel
[B]Riparian plants (‘foliage’ houseplants from DIY shops): [/B]
Prayer plant, parlour palm, peace lillies, unidentified lillies. Planted in shower caddies using hydroton as a substrate.
[/FONT][FONT=Arial][B]Submerged plants:[/B]
Swords, crypts, mosses, hydrocotyle, [I]Micranthemum micranthemoides[/I], water lillies, other low-medium light plants, various floating plants.
[/FONT][B]
Fauna:[/B]
6 [I]Parosphromenus sp. ‘sentang'[/I], 7 [I]Bororas maculata[/I], 4 otos, cherry shrimp, assorted snails, ostracods and other inverts.
[B]
Maintenance and feeding:[/B]
I normally just top off the water lost to evaporation with dechlorinated tap water and add beech/oak/ketapang leaves for the inverts to feed on. Roughly every couple of months I’ll do a small water change, and sometimes supplement the food with the odd algae wafer.
[B]
Set up:[/B]
Once everything was planted I waited about a month for the plants to adapt (the riparian plants required a few weeks to grow new root systems) and for the initial ammonia spike to pass then added about 50 shrimp, the otos and a few other inverts – lots had arrived already on the aquatic plants. Once the shrimp population was looking good (about 3 months in) I added the rasboras, then the gouramis after another month or so when I was sure the food chain was stable.Tank is now 10 months old and doesn’t require any more maintenance than topping up the water and replacing the beech, oak and ketapang leaves as they are broken down. I do do a small water change every couple of months and supplement the feeding a bit when I happen to be home, but I don’t feel it’s essential.
The gouramis and rasboras seem to find plenty to eat in the tank (ostracods and baby shrimp are the main food items I think), and the otos always have bellies that I would describe as moderately rounded.
The male paros have recently started staking out territories around film cannisters, and I think one is bubblenesting so maybe babies soon!
[B]Video:[/B]
[B][URL]http://vimeo.com/30028289[/URL][/B] <- Paro courtship in here [B]Photos:[/B] [IMG]http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/310/widek.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/3572/sideone.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/2680/sidetwo.jpg[/IMG] [I]Parosphromenus sp 'sentang'[/I](male) : [IMG]http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/5073/parom.jpg[/IMG] [I]Parosphromenus sp 'sentang'[/I] (female): [IMG]http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/271/parof2.jpg[/IMG] [I]Bororas maculatus[/I] (male): [IMG]http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/906/bm3y.jpg[/IMG] [I]Otocinclus affinis[/I]: [IMG]http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/8759/oto1a.jpg[/IMG] [I]Neocaridina heteropoda[/I] var. "red" (female): [IMG]http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/2346/cherrycx.jpg[/IMG]
A few more shots of the Paros when they were quite new, they have coloured up since then (see video in first post for courtship behaviour).
Hello Tom and very welcome to this forum. I am so glad to see your post here, – I actually just a few hours ago registered at seriouslyfish just to be able to write a comment there about your setup. I am still waiting for the admin to approve me, so why not just comment here.
I think it is an awesome project you have made there, – and I think your documentation is so great, I just love the film. And I was really curious to ask you about the tecnic and all that regarding the tank, because I was just thinking how on earth do you get lights to the plants, how do you avoid all the ‘normal’ issues of algeas and dirt building up, what kind of water do you use ?
The parosphromenus in the tank seem to thrive and I wouldnt wonder if you suddenly found a few fry swimming around.
Thank you for posting this here, its really interesting.The film also, as I said, is really fantastic, its not easy to capture either paro’es nor ‘tank environment’ so well. I have a few videoes posted around here, and you can see for yourself the quality of those :unsure:.. hmm.. leaves me rather jalous and wondering what to do …
Helene is fully right, welcome Tom!
Mostly I am impressed by the best photos of spec. Sentang – Paros I have ever seen. They are not really colourful variants of the bintan-group, I had them once myself in my tanks. But I have never seen them in such splendid photos that tell us: Even the spec. Sentang are beautiful fish! Tanks a lot, Tom. And Helene: When we are ready to supplement our “other forms”-accounts, we must use some pictures of Tom’s to illustrate the spec. Sentang!Hello Helene and Peter,
Peter, you are very welcome to use my images to illustrate the ‘sentang’ page, I will try to get some still images of flaring and courtship, showing the mature male colouration.
Helene, I really hope that the paros manage to breed in here. I am not taking great care of my water paramaters – I know my tap water is fairly soft and probably acidic from humics in the tank, but have never measured pH or hardness. If there are no successful spawns I will think about switching to RO water. I live in a city so am not too keen on using rain water.
With regard to your other comments, there is almost no algae in this tank, except a small amount of green spot algae (noticeable in the video) on the glass. The whole system is very ‘lean’ in nutrients, and the emergent plants seem to do a good job of keeping the levels stable, hence no algae. The only time algae was a problem was in the first month, while the soil was releasing ammonia and the plants were adapting to hydoculture conditions.
I do not bother removing dead leaves or other dirt from the bottom of the tank, as seems to provide a good home for many of the small invertebrates and the breakdown will produce CO2 for the plants. So far water quality does not seem to be an issue.
I am lucky with the video making because I recently rearranged the tank a little and introduced some floating plants around the front edges. The male paros, which were very shy to begin with, are now happy to be out in the open and have established new territories right where I can see them easily (before this I mainly just saw the females). My new camera seems to be very good for video, and has the useful feature that you can lower the framerate below the normal 25 or 50 frames per second, to let in more light; I shot this footage mainly at 10fps, which makes it a little jerky with fast moving subjects, but fine for capturing courtship etc.
Sometime you may find that paroes can spawn and develop the eggs even in waters that you have not paid particular attention to, as long as there is a certain softness. In fact I had sp.Sentang as well and they were one of the species that actually had several succesfull spawnings in water which was not all that low in either ph or softness. Though some of course, but when I had them I had not yet the experience that I have today, and I had lots of problems adjusting water qualities. Yet I had several fry with those fish. So it could happen.
One of the major differencies for me – with your tank to mine 🙂 – is the question of light I think. With very low lightning you cannot get the good growth of plants, which again means that you do not get the beneficial effect on the waterquality of many plants, –
The light you have is quite powerfull, is it not ?Yes, balancing the light needs of the plants with making sure the Paros still feel secure is potentially tricky. Metal halide lights are quite powerful, but importnatly are also better able to penetrate the water than normal T5/T8 lights. Having the light 2 feet above the tank allows enough light for the less demanding plants to grow, without being so bright to scare the gouramis (I tried some more demanding plants (glosso etc) but they did not do well).
Having the light angled from the back of the tank also means I can keep floating plants around the front edges without blocking the light from reaching the other plants, which keeps the paros happy :).
This tank really is all about compromise and balance… it is not the perfect paro tank, nor the perfect plant tank, but taken as a whole it seems to work – which makes me happy, as the whole thing was a bit of an experiment and could have gone horribly wrong!
I am not always convinced that Paro’es do not like light 🙂 .. I mean, they do like – or some prefer – dark tanks with dim light, – but some paroes seem to not pay too much attention to it and swim around happily. A good thing is probably the amount of companions, be it boraras or shrimps, it may help the paroes to feel less shy also.
But I understand your intention of balance, and this being an experiment, – I think it is a good experiment, gone well so far. And though we do often aim to keep paros so that the spawning is optimal, and you can have the fish breed, – sometimes it is good to experiment with how to keep paros in a different setting.
I have a kind of ‘retirement tank’ at the moment for my oldies, – and a few odd singles that can go together. My last p.sumatranus male f.inst. is sharing tank now with a single p.harveyi male and 2 female quindecim. Of course not optimal, however I am quite sure they will not mix – and in this tank, its really not about breeding but about giving those fish a good retirement 🙂 ..
So sometimes an (extra)ordinary community tank setup is needed, I think, – and its nice to see different ways this can be done.The water: Since long I think that the fears and alarms on the delicacies and difficulties of Parosphromenus-fish are exaggerated. There are many cases that successfulbreeding has taken place with pH between 6 and 7, but always below 7. A low pH of the natural habitats is mostly an insurance of the absence of too many nocious germs, and this is mainly the function in the aquarium, too. If it is possible to keep the milieu rather free of a germ-concentration too high, then it will work with a higher pH, too. But the “softness” of the water is eesential, not for the adult fish but for the eggs and the very young.
The light: The problem is that light may induce too much chemical plant activity and induce instability of the water-parameters. Again, this is mostly no probmen for adult Paros, but young must be lucky to get a milieu as stable as possible. So, a good plant activity is doubtlessly very good for a fish-friendly milieu in general, but the fish from blackwaters are specialists that need their requirements. Myself, I am often working with many thriving plants, too, but it is always difficult to decide whether it’s good for the very young fish or not. The normal planted aquarium using fertilizers and much fast growing leafwork below the water-surface may produce conflicts. Many Parosphromenus cannot fully dispose of their peculiarities of a long adaptation to blackwater conditions.
But nevertheless: Even they (not their eggs ot very young larvae) are adaptive to a certain extent. One should make some experiments to find out one’s own best method. All our experiences show that five good Paro-breeders have developed five different methods.Tom, only now I had time to see your marvellous film. With this tank you succeeded to realize one thing that many peope try but fail: to create a somehow natural milieu with wood, plants, shrimps and different fish that harmonize with each other: it’s a fine community, very subtle elected, not (as usual) dominated by many or large fish, but remaining a big secret, a secret window in an alien world. Congratulations, this is aquaristics at it’s best!
Normally, a friend of the licorice gouramis will keep them in smaller tanks, often without many plants, for the aim is to breed them. But if one was successfull in that, often there are quite a lot of young, and only a part of them can be given away. Then you have enough fish to think of such a decorative and contantly surprising masterpiece of an aquarium, and you can view the licorice gouramis from quite different an angle: just as the secret viewer of their life in nature (or at least something rather near to that).
We would be very glad to see more of your fine work!Peter, thank you very much for your kind words. I am just happy that the tank was turned out close to what I had hoped for (it was an idea that had sat at the back of my mind for over a year before I was able to start the project).
As winter draws ever nearer (in Scotland anyway!), I thought I should take a few shot sof the rather nice light that diffuses into the tank in the mornings…
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