Which species would you choose?

[Phil]

Hey guys,

Which species is the most uncommon/rare out of these 4 or which would you choose to keep and why?

P. Nagyi
P. Ornaticauda
P. Opallios
P. Linkei

I usually like to keep the rarest fish I can get my hands on because I like having fish that not many people have. Let me know which ones you think I should choose. 🙂

~ Phil

[bartian]

Hi there!

While I understand why you’d rather have a species your neighbours don’t have, I think you should not use that argument when buying animals like Parosphromenus. The main point of this project is keeping and breeding the fish not because of their rarity in the hobby, but because of their rarity in their natural habitat. These are highly threatened fish, which should be kept mainly for conservation.

If your goal is having something special rather than saving the species, I’d recommend choosing a more common species, like P. linkei or ornaticauda. I don’t know about the trade in your area, but in the Netherlands bintan and ornaticauda are traded regularly, while linkei and nagyi are common among specialists. I believe opallios is very rare, I don’t think you’ll be able to get them.

I think you won’t really get the chance to choose, since paros aren’t traded frequently. If you do get the chance to choose, and if you’re planning to also breed the fish, I’d recommend taking the most rare species, but even better would be getting both.

[Phil]

^^ Seems like you went back and forth on the rare fish a bit.

I strictly keep rare fish to try and breed for that particular reason> I am making a rare species more available to hobbyist and fish stores locally instead of taking wild caught specimen. From what my guy is saying, I can get those 4 species. I didn’t know the opallios were the most rare but maybe I will pick up a small colony of those too. Thanks for your input.

[bartian]

Depending on your reason to keep them my advice could be either negative or positive, so you’re right about reading two contradictory messages.

If that’s the case, I strongly suggest you to get as many species as you can house and breed. Most species are threatened by habitat destruction, so the captive populations should be as big and genetically diverse as possible. This is a great opportunity, don’t let it slip!

They are, at least where I live. They could be real opallios, but I wouldn’t put my money on it. If they are, you might just be the only American owner in the project!

[helene schoubye]

Hi Phil.
You would be talking about America, right?
I think in that case possibly many of the species will be rather rare, but as Bartian says here in Europe Opallios is very seldom on the lists. It has been in short periods, like last year, there were some being offered in Sweden at least, and I think another place.
In the states, though, I think having someone try to make a ‘base’ stock of p. nagyi or linkei would be really valuable as well, because these are extremely attractive species in my opinion. And in a way, though more often available, they are just as ‘rare’ in other ways. No paro species is really that ‘common’ 🙂 even here.

[Phil]

[quote=”helene” post=2839]Hi Phil.
You would be talking about America, right?
I think in that case possibly many of the species will be rather rare, but as Bartian says here in Europe Opallios is very seldom on the lists. It has been in short periods, like last year, there were some being offered in Sweden at least, and I think another place.
In the states, though, I think having someone try to make a ‘base’ stock of p. nagyi or linkei would be really valuable as well, because these are extremely attractive species in my opinion. And in a way, though more often available, they are just as ‘rare’ in other ways. No paro species is really that ‘common’ 🙂 even here.[/quote]

Thanks for the nice reply 🙂

What I should do is set up 4x 10 gallon tanks and just get a group of 6 of each of the species. I really like the nagyi and linkei too but love the ornaticauda as well. Yes he says he can get me some opallios so we will see if this is true upon arrival which wont be for over a month. If it is a good importer to go through, I will be letting Bill know the rest of the info so he can acquire some more 🙂

[Author]

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