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Hello Chris,
and welcome here.From what I am able to recognize from the pictures, you are probably right. We can however be sure they are not P. deissneri as these were likely never imported commercially and we are even worried they could be the first paros extinct.
I have no idea how to catch them in such a tank. I would try to give them a cave and try to take the male out with it when guarding the clutch. Then be lucky and catch the female. Is the bottom soft? Cause if yes, they will not only hide in plants, but also burry themselves in the substrate. I started my first tank with peat granules on the bottom and since then only had a layer of leaves on the bare bottom, as it works great, they love it and you do not need anything else. + you can take it out and catch the fish. Definitely be prepared for some adventure 🙂
Hello again and thanks for keeping us posted 🙂
The male has started to do his nipping/head down/fins fanned out display towards the female again…I am guessing he wouldn’t be doing that if he were caring for eggs elsewhere in the tank?
actually he would court her anyway, they may have larvae and eggs together from different spawn in the cave, also the spawning may be separated in between two days from time to time. Be prepared to anything. I have males who care for the eggs nonstop and males who only sometimes visit the cave to have a look and take a quick care for the eggs and run to court females and feed themselves again 😀
regarding the leaves, oak is also great and you do not have to bother with cycling the tank. As long as you have the pH low enough and the water is not cloudy. I do that with the all fish from waters this acidic, there are different bacteria involved and it all runs differently, so if you are able to feed reasonably, there is no harm to be done for the fish. On the other hand, they seem to thrive where they are for now, so no reason to hurry and you can fine tune the tank to your liking. Have fun!
Hello Myrrhiam,
as long as you have access to alder cones and some dry oak or beech leaves, you should be perfectly fine 🙂 Just do not be afraid to use enough, there is no way you could harm paros with such natural substances. I would suggest covering the bottom with the leaves (no big layer, just a cover to avoid anoxic decomposition), beech leaves look better and suprisingly last longer) and adding a fair handful of aldercones for every 2.5 galons of water to start with. Thereafter just add more if needed. You may need more to develope eggs successfully, as your total hardness is a little higher than necessary, so chances are that you will have to go down to 5 with pH for this particular reason. But anywhere under 6 the fish will be already fine and it is just a matter of time for the eggs to develope in future attempts. You will see how fish like the new water 🙂 Best wishes!
hello Martin,
try to open the pictures in windows drawing software (right click and choose open with and choose this option). In the software choose resize and you can choose from % or pixels. If you resize it to like 20% of the original size, it should be possible to add them. Works for high qualityx JPEGs (@ 13 MB) for me. If still too big, resize it more the same way.
Josh make sure to get yourself extruded type of flour. I thought all instant flour should be extruded by default, but it turns out they are not, or at least not to the same extent. Extruded one is important as the fats in the flour oxidize quickly under normal circumstances, but extruded stuff will not, because of the starch covering the particles during the proces and so protecting them.
Also set your cultures according to the picture. These are white worms, but the principle works for both. There is a plastic net covered by a piece of glass. To get clear worms, you only put the food on the glass, so that they have to leave the substrate to feed. This way, you are able to collect worms only + they are encapsulated with their food. You will still need to rinse them, but no cocopeat particles anymore…
Hello Josh,
first of all you should be aware, that no matter how widely used, dog food or cat food, or any food containing fats of warmblooded animals is really wrong. The reason is simple, these fats are not apropriate for fish. Fish need fats that are liquid within their range of temperature and those that contain the right forms of fat useful for their organism. For this reason, white worms and grindal worms are known to have to much fat and are used only sparingly by experienced aquarists. The “too much fat” thing is not actually the problem, the problem is too much of bad fats as since people started to use them , they were cultivated on food contaning milk fat (oats and milk was the first food used for these). In fact you can prepare high quality food yourself using instant oat flour and skimmed (no fat) dried milk powder in 3:1 (w/w) ratio. Either use it as powder or add a little water to form little drops, so that you are able to remove these and add fresh food on regular basis. You need to the worms to have quality nutrition, as the substances they contain is what you feed to your fish. I can post some more complex formulas for food cultivation later, but this one is way better for the fish and easy to prepare.
hello and welcome Peter,
from what I see on my conductivity meter, you can simply multiply the PPM by two, to get approximate conductance.
Aside from the “breathing”, I think that huge advantage of the Kordon and other such bags is the water not splashing and otherwise moving. It could be very important with some fish, as the constatnt move of the water in normal bags could be both stressing and exhausting for them. Problem with the other labyrinths could be their need of aproaching the water level to breath.
Sad news… I do not remember from the census if we still have some fish within the project that are confirmed deissneri? Last info I remember was some old pair.
[quote=”Jootje67″ post=5686] …but it could also be that more breeders will co-operate…[/quote]
Yeah, these Indonesian guys have some pretty big alliances and are able to get you anything from the others 😀 Such level of cooperation is not common in Europe.
Hello Gianne,
removing the nest, I would suggest to wait for the larvae to turn black. Once they do, you can simply remove the film canister and place it in to the container. If you have the water right, you should not need any fungicide at that stage anymore. I use the exact same way as one would removing a betta nest. Put some water from the parental tank in to the container and gently scoop the film canister with it or use the other hand to place it in to the container depending on conditions. In case some of the larvae get out from the cave, no need to worry, they develope just as well.In my opinion, you are trying too hard and on too many leveles at once. Restarting the tank is useless. Just be consistent and patient with water changes and prepare the water with alder cone exctract (soak the cones in RO water for day or two, than just use the exctract and do not put the cones in the tank, big handful in one liter of RO water should make the job for about 10 liters of water. I add extract from one big catapa leave that I soak in a bucket in the meantime when preparing the aldercone extract, you transfer that leave in to the tank with water and remove it after another 2-3 days), beech leaves (not green of course! may stay in the tank for very long time, almost do not spoil and make great bottom), Terminalia catapa leaves need to be removed after 2 weeks at the worst. If you bought peat, you may drop the water over it. This way, the rest of the ions in your RO water will exchange for H+ and make the water very acidic and stable. Using more types of these natural substances makes the water better and more stable. Avoid any other chemicals that do not come from these natural things. Also when feeding artemia, make sure you wash it on the sieve with RO water so that the brine solution does not get in to the tank. If you are putting some tap water in the tank with your pippets, the pH will of course go up slowly again.
Regarding the mosquito larvae, they help, but they are not necessary. They just contain substances that help trigger spawning, but these are in many other foods, cyclops for example works great too.
