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Hi there!
1 – The best would probably be to change 5-10L a week. Less is fine, more would not be good.
2 – They’ll happily eat frozen food. Some specimens even accept dried granules, altough that’s highly exceptional. Paros will eat anything from artemia nauplii to big fat mosquito larvae, if it moves, it’s food.
3 – I have no idea about TDS, but I try to keep my tanks below 50µS. My RO-unit gives 6-10µS, and my extremely soft tap water around is like 200µS, for reference. This is not really an absolute value, since they’ll also survive in tap water. In fact, Parosphromenus are very hardy fish, when given a tank of their own. They won’t breed, however, in tap water. Is has to be very soft and acidic for the eggs to develop and hatch.
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!
I got me some new fish yesterday:
No doubt possible about this being sumatranus. I got seven of them, but I found it quite difficult to distinguish female sumatranus in a tank with 200 scared Parosphromenus. I think I have two or three females. While looking for females, I also found this:
It lacks the blue distal band in the caudal fin, which bintan normally do possess. Instead, it shows a reddish band near the caudal peduncle (it is much more intense and visible in reality). The bintan-forms I know (and the other ones in the tank) do not show that band when under stress. Also, it’s shape and size is different from the bintan I know, and it’s unpaired fins are much more rounded than my other paros’ fins (note the very short ventral fins!). I think this is interesting, because I have three types of bintan, and this one looks really different. I caught two similar looking females, so hopefully more will be visible soon.Please don’t mind the cyanobacteria and the fungus on the wood, I’m aware of it and hate it! It seems I have a nice, very invasive and plant-killing strain of cyanobacteria resistant to pesticide.
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.
Just go like twenty kilometers outside of Singapore and throw out a net. I think that’s the easiest way to get them.
I just got sent this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yLpQO6GHdM&feature=youtu.be
Right in the beginning and just after halfway there are some supposed sumatranus.
They’re from an Indonesian exporter, imported by the shop itself. No Ruinemans, so very small chance you’ll see them, I guess.
They are indeed slimmer than the other paros (some even like parvulus, but most are higher built), they have somewhat different stripes, and their colouration is really different. They have dark reddish fins with a distinct black spot in the dorsal fin.
What species other than sumatranus has a conspicious black dorsal spot? I only know it from sumatranus and allani, of which the latter seems very improbable.
If they are that rare nowadays I’ll get me some. I couldn’t clearly distinguish female sumatranus, do they have colour in their fins or are they clear like bintan?
I think, if a fish is capable of building a nest (rudimentary in paros, but sometimes very well developed in sister genera) and defending his eggs and offspring, destroying other males’ nests is not a big deal. Males defend their territory against other males, so agression towards rivals’ offspring seems not too improbable to me.
Paros and coccina-group bettas are the perfect match, if one wants keep paros with other fish for whatever reason. I do combine my bettas with bigger, stronger paros like quindecim[i] and [i]bintan.
However, I think 30 liter is way to small for this combination or for multiple males! The extra stress caused by lack of space will harm them or increase aggression. I’d recommend not keeping Betta in tanks smaller than 60cm (54L), especially when keeping two or more males.The difference in tolerance is indeed very interesting. To my experience, bot paros and bettas are quite tolerant to suboptimal conditions, although coccina-group bettas seem to be more susceptive to stressy environments like badly furnished tanks, whereas paros seem less content with distubances like being moved. My coccina-group bettas (I have hendra and uberis) are the most relaxed fish I know, and tolerate everything I do in the tank without even swimming away. I could easily grab them with my hand.
Given enough hiding places, they don’t seem to care much about their environment. I haven’t noticed any difference in behaviour or colouration at different temperatures or pH-values.I can’t really say why they were so unimpressed by the low temperature, but I find it interesting. I’m going to pull out the heater in some tanks here, to see what happens at 18 degrees.
That water isn’t spilled, it is fed back to the water cycle. The water we use here has absolutely nothing to do with drought in Africa and other countries. Also, saying billions when there are only 7 billion people around sounds somewhat exaggerated.
Phosphoric acid doesn’t destroy very rare habitat’s irreversibly. At the same time we use a lot less of it, so I think damage caused by it is a lot smaller than that of peat.
But I get your point, we should keep in mind the downside of whatever we do.
Bartian, my paros goes at around 20, or 21-22 and they get lots of offspring, – so maybe the temperature question can be discussed. Mine certainly never goes at a temperature at 26.
That’s interesting. In that case, forget what I said! I’ll see if that temperature works for me too.
Omdat het Parosphromenus-Project een internationaal project is met leden van over de hele wereld is de voertaal Engels. Er zijn maar weinig Nederlandse leden, dus in het Nederlands posten heeft niet zoveel zin. Als je Engels moeilijk vindt wil ik wel zo nu en dan wat voor je vertalen 🙂
As such, I will continue in English.
They will stay alive at room temperature, but they certainly won’t breed. Since this is a crucial aspect of keeping paros, I do not recommend keeping them at this temperature. I normally keep my paros at around 24-26 degrees celsius, with which they seem to be okay.
I mainly use peat (in small amounts) for covering the glass tank floor. It looks a lot better than sand or gravel. You are completely right to say that’s kind of hypocritical! It’s better not to use peat when not strictly necessary.
For bringing down pH I prefer beach and oak leaves, which I also use as soil. To my experience, when I put in a layer of leaves and pour RO water in, pH doesn’t drop quick enough to prevent decomposition of the leaves. To start at a good pH I use small amounts of phosphoric acid to bring the pH to around 4, after which the leaves will keep it low.
