[john walsh]

I am planning to meet you all again this Autumn, and i am very much looking forward to it.
Besides Alan, David Armitage also sends best wishes to you Peter….And i know he picked up a group of P. Quindecim i brought along to the auction.
It would be amazing if we could persuade them to come to Hamburg too.

[john walsh]

I completely agree with you Peter.I think the continued loss of habitat is limiting the size of the catches obtained by the local collectors, while the roads which service the palm oil plantations are making it easier for the collectors to search a wider area and come across more species.This is the second time in the past 12 months that I have encountered mixed shipments!
Your idea of a quality photo bank of female fish is a good one.

[john walsh]

Hi Fredrik,
Yes. I took delivery of 12 of each (although one of cf anjunganensis had died in transit :-(). These are definately ‘mixed’ shipments. Included in those labelled ‘Anjunganensis’ is at least one bintan type male and none of the fish look like ‘anjunganensis’ to me (although I have never kept confirmed fish of that species), and even in the two pairs that had had the failed spawns I have not been able to see them display enough (because of the leaf litter)to offer a confident opinion. However, the red colouration in the unpaired fins is not a solid block and the blue/green irridescence is not confined to the fringes of those fins. They are beautiful fish whatever they are!
The so called ‘alfredi’ look like your second photograph in the forum thread ‘Whats this?’. They are NOT Nagyi for me. I have kept and bred nagyi for some time and these fish are different. There may be one Nagyi male in the batch who has flushed dark on occasions but even he does not convinced me when compared to the Nagyi I know are true.
It is so frustrating that shipments get mixed…but i will endevour to identify true pairs of whatever I have and if the offspring look like the parents I will be delighted.
Best Wishes,
John

[john walsh]

Thanks Bernd. They are plastic cannisters. I will try a ceramic tube and hope that resolves the problem.

[john walsh]

Too far away for me …but they do look authentic, and as there was not many of these fish reported in the last census, I hope someone from the project can secure some of these fish.

[john walsh]

Hi Bill,
the problem (for the UK at least)is that the airlines refuse to carry them. Customs is not a big issue, but to comply with customs you have to forewarn which flight is bringing in the fish.
It is these considerations which have led to people simply ‘smuggling’ in the fish in their hold luggage. However, if one was prepared to drive across the relevant borders then all is legal and above board.

john

[john walsh]

For UK based Paro friends, I have found that this preparation, a ready mixed liquid formula Flubendazole, is indeed effective in eradicating Hydra:

http://www.ntlabs.co.uk/products/Anti-Fluke-%26-Wormer-(Aquarium)-%2311-.html

[john walsh]

I can only echo the comments of Helene and Peter, it was a fantastic event and I was honoured to be a part of it. Everyone was very welcoming, warm, encouraging and generous, but Peter (the true Paro Godfather 🙂 ) is right to single out Bernd, who was so giving, not least of his time (Danke Schoen Herr Bussler!! 🙂 ).

Peter has challenged us all with growing the Project and I will do my very best to make a meaningful contribution to that goal over time.

But for now, I am happy to report that I am the guardian of 5 species that, if not necessarily new to these shores, have certainly not been in the UK for many years. So now to the business of breeding them so that they may be available to other Paro friends in the UK and elsewhere! All of these precious fish arrived safe and well and are settling into their new homes.

Warmest regards and great respect to all the good people I met in Hamburg,

John

[john walsh]

I am delighted to confirm that there are three of us attending from the UK 🙂

[john walsh]

These are beautiful little fish regardless of a positive identification.
About 10 weeks ago I was supplied with a group of fish via Ruinemans described as P. Phoenicurus (they are still on Ruinemans stock list). Just like described by Helene, they were small and not showing much colour, but under torch light the larger part of the caudal fin was showing as a vibrant red. They have grown on a bit but I think I too have just a couple of males and there is no discernible courtship behaviours and so I am yet to see them in their full colours to confirm or deny their identification. The dominant male stays largely in the same place under the heater, and the body shape is much like Helene’s photographs. I wonder if we have the same fish? Time will tell.
Looking at these photographs, I wonder id p. opalios should also be considered. There are few good photographs of Opalios to compare against, but I think it is a close match.

[john walsh]

Congratulations Dorothee, great news and with so many fish dispersed around the mainland, hopefully more Paro friends will join in with your success and a healthily diverse breeding stock can be maintained.

Helene, your small problem with large numbers of Tweediei juveniles to pass on could be eased should you ever visit us here in the UK 😉

I too find that small tanks (<10L) with single pairs are more successful. If courtship behaviour is not present after a short time or has subsided, I will use the opportunity of a water change to separate out both fish, re-scape the tank (moving the filter and heater too) and reintroduce the fish one at a time(female first, male one hour later). This method has not always produced successful mating, but never ceases to switch on courtship in the male fish in my experience.

[john walsh]

To be fair, I think that you, Peter Finke and the other Senior Members on the Project do a great job in keeping this site a hugely valuable and accessible resource. That we can debate how to move things forward without fear of censure is an indication of how progressive the Project is. 🙂

[john walsh]

I agree that it would not be good to have more than one census. But ideally THE census should at least include the City and Country in which the stock was held and the ability (restricted to members of the Paro project) to contact that person through this site’s Private Message facility. Currently some of those paro friends responding to the census may have different Paro Project ‘Names’.
I have no quarrel with the current ‘Searching for fish’ facility, but it would not necessarily help me identify, for example, how many species may be available to me within an hours drive from Hamburg on a given day if I was planning to visit with the aim of bringing back stock for other UK based Paro friends.
How fantastic would it be to have a ‘living’ (Real Time)census, where I could note, for example, last nights spawning of my P. Linkei 😉
and track their development through to numbers of juveniles and then distribution? Again, this is not meant to detract from the importance of our twice yearly census, but rather to reinforce both the urgency of our projects aims and ambitions, and the successes that we enjoy.

[john walsh]

I think it would be useful to the aims of the Project, if the UK based Paro friends who are committed to breeding and maintaining these little jewels, were to form a loose group within the Project, to promote the Project, share information, and keep an up to date localised census of the stock held within the UK. This cohort could act as a virtual hub for dispersing surplus stock to those new friends attracted to the cause.
We should embrace the imperative to propogate, and be prepared to sell on our fish onto other Paro friends if our own breeding attempts with specific species have failed. I have always understood that keep these fish and not breed them is consumption and not preservation.
Such a distribution hub would ease the introduction of paro species with proper identification and location data into the UK. This could be achieved by the sharing of costs in bringing fish from mainland Europe into the UK. I agree with Helene by the way, and some basic research underlines her hunch,that it is much cheaper to get a return flight on a budget airline from Manchester to Hamburg (For instance), than it is to pay for a 24hour courier service.
That link from the mainland to these islands is crucial if Stock levels of the most endangered species are to grow, but also in ensuring that the gene pool of individual species, when refreshed, is maintained in distinct populations.
The costs of collecting the fish and returning to the UK could be shared by all those in the UK who were recieving these fish. And the fish could be delivered to their new keepers via an agreed, central meeting/distibution point (eg Motorway service station).
This could work, and i ask all the UK paro friends who are interested in helping each other in this way to contact me via private message.
However, perhaps the biggest difficulty, is in establishing de facto distribution hubs on the mainland. It is rare, i would suspect, that any one airport city has more than one paro friend with surplus stock at any given time. So we would need the locations and ParoProject mailbox contact details of all respondents to our European wide census, so that we can map where the surplus stock is and, ideally, congregate it around any place that we can access directly from a UK airport.
I would very much like to attend an international convention in Hamburg (although us British are infamously ill equipped in ‘foreign’ languages!!), but my heart sinks at the prospect of waiting ten months to get my eager hands on species such as anjunganensis,alfredi,rubrimontis or quindecim.

John

[john walsh]

This white structure is a fungal structure associated with live yeast. It is harmsless in my experience, and when it has occurred on the aquarium glass, you can notice over a couple of days that it moves up towards the source of light.

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