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Hello!
I want to thank this group for being such an informative resource. I am very excited to start working with Paros! They are lovely little fish and I was so grateful to receive 6 juvenile P. tweedei from the Olson’s in Seattle. They were bred by Lawrence Kent (thank you thank you!!!). Currently I have them in a blackwater set-up with tons of driftwood, java fern/moss, and lots of Indian Almond Leaves. I basically treat them like Betta burdigala, which I had a lot of success breeding in the past. From what I have read, some licorice gouramies and Bettas from the coccina complex are found in the same habitats? My burdigala were spawning once a week at one point and I had quite a few fry from them. I am hoping that similar techniques can be applied to these fish as well.
I am most concerned about the water conditions for spawning. I am really sorry if this was answered in another post, but I couldn’t find one that I felt fit my questions. The burdigala were able to spawn in San Francisco tap water made acidic with lots of Indian Almond Leaves. Out of the tap, TDS is ~ 237 ppm – after addition of Indian Almond Leaf and driftwood, it goes down to ~ 110 ppm (sometimes even lower). kH was about 60, gH around 80. pH dropped precipitously when I added IAL, but not sure how much – I don’t think the pH test kit I bought was able to go that low accurately. (I am ordering an electronic one that should arrive in the mail soon).
I have access to a lot of rain water. The readings appear golden – TDS of only 8 ppm, 0 kH and 0 gH – however, I am worried because I live in San Francisco. We have received a lot of rain and storms recently (they say we have had more rain in March than we have had in THREE YEARS) so I am hoping that the water is clean from contaminants. Are there any other ways to be sure? I know I need to test pH too. The meter should be here in a couple of days. I expect the pH to drop drastically with IAL, wood, and alder cones!
I also found the thread on what temperature to spawn Paros at. My room temp is about 20C, a temperature that my Betta rubra, pygmy sunfish, and killifish spawn readily at. However, it appears some breeders go up to 26C? I was also reading in the AMAZONAS article that they live in some very hot temperatures in the wild, sometimes even close to 32C! What temperature would be best for spawning tweedei?
In summary, my specific questions:
1) What other contaminants may be in rain water collected from urban areas, and are there ways to check for them?
2) What temperature is best to spawn P. tweedei at?
Cheers and will keep you all updated on my progress. The dominant male in my little group is so beautiful!
Gianne
Hello Gianne00
Welcome to forum, – as this is your first post, it had to be approved by an admin,- this is now done 🙂
Regarding your questions, – I will leave that more to others who are experienced with rain water, I am personally not that.
But I can say that I keep my paros at room temperature, and although a bit higher perhaps, 22-23, I dont think temperatures in that range is a problem for spawning with paros. Even in those places in nature where the temperature is high, in the lower regions of the water the temperature may be cooler than that, and paros are not excatly living in the surface of the water where the temperature is higher.Welcome Gianne
I breed for over 20 years Paros and only use rainwater, live in a big city and still very close to an airport. I think so that my rainwater carries pollutants, but in nature it is safe too. Where our Paros cars and laundry in the streams and rivers are washed come, it’ll make you more worry. Important is sure the temperature of temperature depends on the egg development. At 25 or 27 ° C, the eggs develop in 2 to 3 days, it is cooler, it may take up to 5 or 6 days. Since the water is contaminated with germs have the germs without harming the eggs at cooler temperatures more time. Germs in the water can not be avoided, but by frequent water changes, with me once a week 50%, germs can be minimized. I caught Parosphromenus in Malaysia / Selangor at 30 ° C in fast running water. For Paros I have on average 26 ° C with me, that seems to be a temperature at which almost all Paros feel comfortable, it is also at 22 ° C, just try it.
True, I have in the biotope of harvey also coccina caught, but not to the creek right but in small remaining pools of water with large quantities of vegetation and wood, we had so to say digHi Gianne,
Welcome to the forum. Nice to hear you have your tweediei from Lawrence Kent – I agree, they are very beautiful, as you have said. Your experience with keeping and breeding wild bettas will go a long way with keeping and breeding your tweediei. As the more experienced breeders have already commented, keep a close eye on your water conditions, especially conductivity. I was only able to get viable larvae with a conductivity of 50 µS or lower. However with your rainwater showing a reading of 8 TDS (or perhaps ~16 µS), you are well below that. I think it was commented that one does not want to go too low on TDS/conductivity, maybe a bit higher say 15- 20 TDS (30-40 µS) might be better? I’m not sure positively sure of that, maybe others can comment on those values.I have some F1 tweediei from Lawrence as well, you can see some photos of them here. I think there may have been a first spawn from them, as one of the males has been missing from feeding time and occasionally seen chasing other siblings away from his cave under some leaves. I will separate the two males with a female each in separate spaces for future breeding.
Good luck with yours and if you are handy with a camera, please post photos if you get the chance! BTW, thanks for including the link to your website, very nice!
David
Hi All~
Thank you all very much for the informative comments! I was getting really excited to separate out the dominant pair into the new spawn tank – I had the temperature at 26C, the rain water stained with IAL/alder cones, the pH low….
I do an annual deworming of my entire fish room because I occasionally feed live black worms from the local store. I rinse and feed them every day and the worms look healthy, but I do an annual deworming as a preventative regardless. Fish that readily accept frozen/thawed food receive fenbendazole-soaked brine shrimp, and fish that refuse non-live food are treated with Prazi Pro at the recommended dosage. I have NEVER had problems with this regimen before.
I woke up to all my licorice gouramies either dead or floating. It was completely devastating. I scooped the ones that were floating but still breathing into the new tank – it looks like I might have 3 or 4 females pull through. The males made me cry. They are so incredibly colorful, even dead. Ironically, my pygmy sunfish I treated the exact same way are spawning again this morning. I had no idea that these little ones were that sensitive. I always thought PraziPro was super gentle, and some of my other friends also use it as a preventative de-wormer once a year or when they get new fish. Note in the future – never ever treat with PraziPro (or anything else – I would anticipate that they never get bacterial infections because of the near sterile water conditions?)
I’m going to see if I can get another male from Lawrence…I feel absolutely terrible. I’m glad some of the females were able to pull through.
Hi Gianne,
This is really sad and I can very well understand why you are depressed. But I think all of us must earlier or later learn how different paros are from what we are actually used to when it comes to any kind of special treatment/feeding or whatever.
I personally don’t know what was in your medication that made them die but maybe there are some other people who have any ideas.
In general, I think your deworming day is of no good for the paros. First of all, I would not really consider blackworms an appropriate food for paros especially if they are from a local shop. These life foods are usually in no good conditions which makes them vauable in means of nutrients for the fish. They can actually starve to death because they dont get enouch nutriens out of these worms. Something similar seems to be known from too old and non enriched Brine shrimp larvae.
Besides this, if you provide the necessarily low ph and the water clean, there will be almost no germs certainly including these special worms you fear.
It is a part of the message of the paroproject that for actual aquaristics, almost none of the medications, chamicals etc. that we like so much to throw in our tanks are needed, some are even leading to fatal events.
Personally, I am convinced that neither of our fish need external chemistry-support unless they show real signs of uneasieness and are visibly suffering. This is of course a question of observation and feeling in your belly what your animals need. No fish that is kept with appropriate kind and amount of food and in fresh water with the needed ph, EC etc. is in need if such things since if else, they would not survive in nature.
My advise would be:
Keep everything running as before since they have apparently liked it very much. Stop feeding bought livefoods and blackworms. In the summer, The best imaginable food source are black mosquito larvae which you can easily grow in almost any backyard in a pot of water and hay. In winter, mine usually live on microworms and Brine shrimp naupliae…Greetings Rafael
I certainly learned my lesson. My fish usually get a mix of grindal worms, white worms, and brine shrimp naupliae that I culture myself, plus the black worms I occasionally get from the shop. I can’t keep things outside (my land lady does a lot of gardening), otherwise I would culture mosquito larvae and daphnia. Sometimes I get daphnia from my friend’s cultures when I visit though 🙂
I keep the black worms in a shallow dish of water and actually feed them with Vita-Chem for a week with daily water changes before I start feeding them to my fish. Ever since I started doing that, the black worms stay very healthy. In comparison to white worms and grindal worms, the black worms do much better getting my fish into final spawning condition for some reason. They are definitely only a very small part of the diet though, maybe 2x week. They are too fattening otherwise.
I will definitely not be doing deworming on them again! I should have realized that the risk of disease in such water conditions would be low. I will probably drop it altogether since I’ve never had problems with intestinal parasites anyways 🙁
Still feel sick :sick:
We all make mistakes it is the less fun part of learning but essential to it.
As we say over here it is not that you make them but what you with it.
That’s very sad.
Paros are very sensitive to chemicals. I know of one case in which a flea powder was used to treat a dog. That was in another room in the Paros have been maintained, while almost all animals died.
Well cheer up, the next time will not happen to you the safe again. :cheer:Thanks all. Hopefully I will be able to visit Lawrence when I am visiting my family in a couple of weeks!
A couple of my fish friends consoled me after the incident, too…one was cleaning an extremely rare apisto tank, and the female got sucked into the tube and suffered a pretty horrible death. One of my killifish friends had a rare breeding group of a Rivulus species, and he forgot to cover the tank…they all jumped out in the 10 minutes he was in the bathroom. Another one of my friends in the Midwest lost power during a 3 day snow storm and most of his discus died. I know things happen, but it still hurts, especially when they are so rare and special! I’m lucky that I haven’t had any huge disasters…but then…the big earthquake is supposed to hit San Francisco one of these days O_o
PraziPro is just a 5% solution of praziquantel, a classic de-wormer many aquarists use successfully. But, as has been said before, Paros are obviously not your “normal” aquarium fish. I can understand why you’re heartbroken.. 🙁
I have great news! Lawrence was kind enough to give me another chance with the tweediei and I was able to get another small group of juveniles when I went home again last month (and somehow we missed each other once again hahaha – busy!) They have been eating and growing well since I brought them home. One clear male now, crossing my fingers for another.
My local group, California Betta Society, occasionally does group import buys from Asia. We coordinate with breeders in Asia to have all of our fish sent together to our transhipper at SFO and then we meet her in the parking lot and pick up the fish from her right after they get off the plane. It’s a pretty fun day hanging out with other hobbyists. I decided to order one pair of P. linkei from Hermanus so that I could gain experience with an easier Paro before the tweediei matured…
I received the pair last Sunday (May 15)….and I have fry today! (May 23)!! I’m so happy! They are really beautiful. I did get some pictures of the male tending his fry, but my big computer isn’t working so I can’t upload them. I think there are only 10 or so. I am amazed how large the fry are compared to Betta species!!
My plan is to just keep them together for now. I was reading through other posts and it seems that they will do multiple rounds of spawning in quick succession? I will introduce even more cover into the tank for the fry to hide in, too. I will be getting another pair of tanks soon to set up for licorice gouramies – I just had no idea they would spawn so fast! 😀 Thanks everyone for your encouragement!
Hey,
This sounds amazing. Yes, they will keep spawning for some time and some should survive. If you want to dramatically increase your “output” you can at some point after a few more spawnings catch the adults out if their present tank and put them into your new one. Then, many of the fry that would have been eaten by the adults would survive. It of course depends on your aims and the behaviour of your linkei but mine almost never let any youngsters come through without separation. Thats of course also related to the tank stze…
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