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The fish had been in quarantine a number of weeks before shipping out and were already colored up a week or two before I purchased them (and they were shipped about 3 days after I bought them) 🙂 And this in less than ideal water. I thought having additional fish other than the pair would result in the ‘extras’ eating any fry produced? The tank, as stated, is a half filled standard 10 gallon/38 litre, 45 cm by 25 cm by 30 cm (the water is only 15 cm high)
Another small update! I bought my paros yesterday…they will be shipping next week and hopefully arriving thursday 🙂 They are a trio of Parosphromenus ‘sentang’…obviously one of the females will need to be moved when I try to spawn them.
Just a little update on the tank…or, more accurately, on what will be feeding the tank 🙂 My microworm culture arrived monday the 13th of June, and yesterday (the 17th, 2016) I harvested it for the first time…they’re doing VERY well. By the way, before I got the culture, I found a harvesting technique online that would be good to share here. I found it on the website of a certain Wayne Schmidt, a betta breeder who, in turn, got this from another hobbyist: just put a damp paper towel on top of part of the microworm culture. In large cultures, you can simply scrape numerous microworms off with a teaspoon…otherwise put another damp paper towel on top of that, and when you go to harvest, remove the top towel and use a turkey baster to rinse the microworms into water.
Does that mean that 20% water changes are insufficient for paros? (I guess this also means that paro fry lack the notorious sensitivity fish fry have to water changes…I’ve heard that doing water changes on fry of some species can kill all the fry from shock).
You’re right about rainwater…no need to dechlorinate something that should never have chlorine in the first place! However, I also use a water distiller to produce some of my water, and I am unsure whether this device would allow any chlorine/chloramines to remain in the distilled water that remains. In any case, failing to notice this flaw with my dechlorinator seems to be what undid all my prior efforts to make good licorice gourami water…I think I will switch back to using chiefly rainwater as long as the TDS meter shows it to be fairly clean (my prior attempt came after a long dry spell and captured an incredible amount of pollutants that hiked the TDS up)
Consider this ordeal practice if I ever go to ornaticauda or parvulus…
Good news! I found what the problem was…my dechlorinator :O You see, I use seachem prime as my dechlorinator, but a ml of prime treats 10 gallons…thus, I dilute it with tap water so that 1 ml treats 1 gallon. Doing some tests over the past two days reveals that this prime/tap mixture has a VERY high TDS…high enough that a single ml can single handedly increase the TDS/conductivity of a gallon of water by the observed amount, and presumably play havoc on the PH as well. I have started adding vinegar to this dechlorinator mix to counter that…will have to see how it works.
When I put the aforementioned prepared water (with a conductivity of about 17 microsiemens and a PH of 4.1) in the almost empty 10 gallon, it subsequently rose to 23 microsiemens and 6 ph! This makes no sense…the tank has no substrate nor nothing else that would obviously cause such a spectacular rise in either TDS or PH. Any suggestions on what is going wrong? (PS…this tank is bare bottom and its only decor is its leaves, sticks, and plants)
Thankx for the replies thus far! I decided to start the tank over…this time, it will chiefly use distilled water, with the only rainwater that I use being directly caught from the sky. The tank was going to have water changes all along in case anyone was worried (would 20 percent a week be good?).
Almost forgot…will be using peat moss and tiny amount of distilled white vinegar to acidify the water
Do you mean no ability to measure that low or very low accuracy if they do? I did see some paper tests online that reached from 14 to 0.
Daphnia not such a good idea, then? OK. Any other suggestions for an aquatic live food source? (Anything terrestrial, like grindal worms, will get my parents upset…I am already hatching brine shrimp but would like an additional food source for the winter months where I can’t culture mosquito larvae)
Oh dear…didn’t mean to start any heart attacks here! :ohmy: Sorry for even suggesting that…I’ll stick with an easier species then. Still…if you want licorice gouramies to breed, would the ‘covering the tank’ idea be useful?
(PS…for those who are concerned about my sanity, I know I’m not almighty…I just don’t want all my usernames to be exactly the same 🙂 )
That’s good! Thankx 🙂 U. gibba was the main species I had in mind, as I was not sure whether the other species has bladders large enough to threaten Paro fry. On a side note…if I could find a sufficiently inert/acidic substrate that doesn’t alter the TDS much, could I grow terrestrial bladderworts emersed in a paro tank?
