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A few posts below that two, of which the second indeed shows a “normal” filamentosus, is one more picture showing the new form.
Cool your chocos spawned! You’re on the right way then. If you do like Peter says you’ll probably be able to spawn the paros also, which would be even better than chocos.
They truly are beautiful! On the IGL forum Martin Hallmann posted two more pictures, which looked even better. I hope to find more people in the Netherlands wanting them so I could do a collect order from Tropicwater to make sending less costly.
Hi!
There is a lot to tell you, clearly. First of all, really cool you started keeping paros!
They are great fish to keep, but there are quite some downsides too.
I see you are keeping them with Tanichthys. Sorry to say, but those are probably the worst tankmates one could choose. They come from completely different habitat types and their requirements are alike. Parosphromenus come from highly acidic peat swamps, wile Tanichthys come from swiftly-flowing mountain streams and even survive winter here in the Netherlands. For the latter, this is not a big deal. They survive everything. Paros, on the other hand, definitely do not. They probably survive in your tank since you have two of the easier species(but they don’t get nearly as beautiful as when kept well!), but they will not proliferate. One should keep in mind all species of Parosphromenus are severely threatened by human activity. Therefore, emphasis should be on breeding them, not just keeping.Astonishingly, they are able to get enough food in your tank with two of the most voracious species I know, namely Tanichthys and neon tetras. In most alike cases the paros die from starvation when kept with similar fish.
Especially P. filamentosus is not very hard to breed(for a Parosphromenus, that is) so I strongly recommend setting up a small breeding tank. 20 liters is sufficient. Use RO or rainwater and put in a lot of oak leaves and/or peat to get the pH down to 5 or so. Feed them a lot of live food and with some luck you’ll be able to get some youngs.
How many of both species do you have?
I think that is a good way to keep them. So don’t change so much they breed constantly but do change little bits. That seems plausible to me.
Since the fish have clear spawning periods in nature I don’t believe it is good to keep them spawning constantly. They will get exhausted and die young. This is one of the reasons I don’t change water often. I mostly do it when I think it is a good time for them to breed.
Fish (and especially paros!) adapt and specialize to the environment they live in. For paros this is acidic and soft water with clear spawning seasons. Because they specialize to this environment they lose the ability to thrive in other conditions in a certain way. We experience that when they are put in wrong water. I believe this also goes up for spawning seasons. Paros are adapted to spawn in certain periods. Spawning them constantly means going against nature, which can only harm the fish.
Nature always knows best, so I have a strong tendency to believe her.In my opinion water changing is heavily overrated. Without significant water changes my fish look best. Sensitive fish mostly do much better without changes.
I haven’t changed water for weeks and now for the first time my Dicrossus filamentosus have swimming fry. I also experienced this with Heckel’s discus. This is a hard to keep species, but without any water changes they looked great and didn’t have problems at all.
I believe water changing is only good for inducing spawning in certain fishes. Otherwise it will only ruin the tank’s equilibrium and thus harm sensitive fish.
Very nice fish! The betta also.
That species is hard to get here in the Netherlands. I’ve been looking for it quite a time now. Perhaps the IGL tagung will get me some…It appears to me paros are specialized shrimp-killers. I have the same experience you described: not a single young shrimp can make it to adulthood, although there are a lot of adult shrimp carrying eggs. The way they move and approach shrimps looks dedicated for hunting young shrimps.
Indeed, from an adult shrimp a paro could harvest a lot of eggs, so it would earn more food than when he would eat the hole shrimp.
Yes, paros canbe quite agressive, although this is rather predatory than agressive behaviour.
My P. cf. bintan Sentang female(not the male) is very territorial towards the Dicrossus she lives with. She chases them away for half a meter sometimes. The Dicrossus are fully grow adults. I supect her from biting off the male’s tail filaments.Your water seems right for linkei. Someone I know even bred them in similar pH.
Corys normally don’t eat fish fry, so perhaps they even make good company for paros, as long as the water parameters are kept in mind.
Note that I keep them that way because I can’t catch them since the tank is full of plants. Also, it is P. sp. Sentang, one of the most traded species. With rarer species I would tear the tank down to put them in a breeding tank.
They are very active in this tank and not shy at all. They have a clear territory in wich the Dicrossus are attacked, even by the female. They do spawn in this tank actually. It is very probable that there are several youngs hiding in the plants. The other fish never creep into the plants, only the paros do that.
How is your water then?
Since paros live in extremely acidic water they are adapted to living in such an environment. This means they got some features, in exchange for which they lost some other. One of those lost features is the ability of thriving in hard and/or basic water.Good to hear you are breeding them too. P. linkei appears to breed relatively easy.
