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Guess I’ll try to do that, thankx…more thinking other dissolved compounds, though (or do they just degrade into ammonium?)
OK! Thankx 🙂 There’s already a heap of cover in this tank (if anything, the back has less cover than the front) but I’ll try to.
Note; asking the seller revealed that the sand in this ‘soil’ is inert, so I think it will be fine. That said…PLEASE comment if I am missing something here!
Thankx! I guess I will move the adults – at least – to the new tank in about a week or two…will be waiting on the fry (I want to check if there are any others in there). PS…I added some leaves to the tank yesterday and the male has responded by obsessively trying to court a female (clearly the reason he wasn’t courting was he had no good cave spots…). I’ve seen a lot of ‘sexy eyes’ and flashing, but no spawn as of yet.
UPDATE…just set up a tank that is holding at a PH of 4.3 or so. Unfortunately, I used so many peat granules to do this that the conductivity shot up to 64 microsiemens from the roughly 3.2 of the distilled water it started with…hopefully that will go down with water changes, but still…
[quote=”Peter Finke” post=5797]I never had jumping Paros myself, but … I always covered my tanks. The best Paro-scientist I knew, Dr. Walter Foersch, founder of Paro-aquaristics, never saw jumpng Paros, but always covered his tanks, too.
On the other hand I know of some people who were surprised by some Paros in this respect; trusting in the non-jumping they left tanks uncovered, and … the fish jumed out. But besides this happens rarely only, in the cases I came across those tanks either were meant as a provisionary home only, not equipped “orderly” as Paro-tanks, or the feeding or the water values were bad.
I strongly advise you to cover all Paro-tanks although fish accustomed to a good tank with a good milieu and regular feeding hardly ever jump.[/quote]
Will do…I keep plastic wrap around for exactly that reason 🙂
That’s too bad! I will keep that in mind while aclimating paros in the future, then…by the way, today I (finally!) succeeded in setting up a tank that has a ph consistently below 5 (it’s about 4.2-4.3 right now). However, being the impatient guy I am, I used a lot of peat granules to accomplish that task, sending the conductivity up from about 3.2 (the conductivity of the distilled water the tank started with) to an annoying 64 microsiemens :(. I’m hoping that value will drop as the tank matures and I do water changes, but…would such a ‘high’ conductivity interfere with successful paro spawning, especially since almost all of it comes from the tannin sources? (For those concerned, there are no paros in this tank…just set it up yesterday)
Thankx 🙂 Hopefully they will. I am setting up a 2.5 gallon tank for more intensive breeding…hoping to move a pair there, keep them there for a month, remove them, and see if fry result. How does that sound?
‘ello again! Long time since any updates…my continued frustration with the paroes eventually moved me to move them to a 5 gallon with their plants and convert their 10 gallon to a heavily planted tank, thinking I would never succeed in breeding them or even getting the male to court again (he had stopped doing that a while before this). However, I have since started feeding grindals in addition to BBS and have been more careful with not unintentionally increasing the hardness by other means, and for most of the past 2 weeks the male has been diligently trying to court the females (leading me to the conclusion I was not feeding them enough to encourage spawning). Anyhow, I have not seen the male now for several days…we just had a major hot spell up here that also noticeably warmed the tank, and I have a suspicion he may finally have succeeded in spawning. I have my fingers crossed, anyway 🙂 after all the effort I have put towards these fish, it would be nice if they actually spawned.
Filled the 10 gallon to capacity and added submerged plants back…the paros are a lot less stressed now 🙂
Thankx for your replies! I admit, I am just frustrated with how stubborn their water is to acidify if I make the slightest mistake…leaving hardly a few mm of the defective terra cotta pot water in the spawning tank (which still has no fish in it) was sufficient to send the PH shooting up to 6.5 from the low 4’s. Haven’t tried such drastic changes on the main paro tank.
Almost forgot…I hear a lot about people getting paros to breed with live mosquito larvae. Are these actually needed to get them in spawning condition?
‘ello all! Here’s how things stand:
– Ammonia/ammonium levels are now under control (.25 mg/l right before 40% water change), courtesy of reduced feedings.
– PH levels are still aggravatingly high (6.7 in the main tank). Will be performing a tank restart to try to get it to the desired 5 or less value. I’ve also heard of a product (acid buffer by seachem) that seems to convert carbonates to CO2 in the process of acidifying the water…likely a useful product for a paro tank 🙂 Will be looking into that in the near future. On a related note, I have taken to boiling alder cones to extract their tannins, which is being VERY helpful in that respect
– In an impulsive moment, I made the mistake of removing all the plants and other decor from the main tank while trying to see the male more. While it worked…all three fish are much more flighty now and (likely combined with the above PH issue) visibly stressed (in particular it has been a while since I have seen the male try to court any of the females, and his colors are faded). This is going to need fixing…going to rescape the tank to both make it more enjoyable to the fish and to make it less of an eyesore (while on that topic…any suggestions on caves for amorous male paros? I tried using terra cotta caves as shown in many paro tanks, but they sent the PH in the spawning tank I tried them in jumping up)
– Still feeding the fish BBS every other day. I have grindal worm cultures I received last week that are doing well, but they are not quite at harvesting level yet…when they are they will be fed 2 or 3 times a week (on days they are not fed BBS)
Well, that’s my update! Thankx for giving me a listen!The alder cones arrived yesterday…however, my woes with paros (or, more accurately, their water) are continuing 🙁 Sunday I purchased a few small, plain terra cotta pots at a local store with the intent of using them as spawning caves for my male paro…not even imagining that they were not nearly as inert as expected. As of yesterday the future spawning tank had shot up from a ph in the mid 4’s to the mid 6’s…all because of the terra cotta pots. In retrospect I think I should have rinsed them first, but still…with all these problems, I don’t feel as if I will ever get close to spawning my paros.
