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AJ — I would make two suggestions at this point. Stop feeding for 48 hours and then to a 30 -40 percent water change. In the meantime I would go to Wallgreens or a similar drug store and try to purchase some plastic pipettes (photo attached). When I hatch BBS I find I have way to much shrimp to feed to the Paros. The tendency is to overfeed. With the pipettes you can feed very small amounts and direct where to place the BBS in the tank. For example, when I feed blood worms I actually count the worms released into the tank. If I return 30 minutes later and I find worms on the floor of the tank then I feed too much and I adjust the next feeding. It’s a little more difficult to measure the amount of BBS. In the beginning it was tempting when you were finished feeding to dump the remaining BBS into the tank. I do not do that anymore. Now whatever remains I feed to the wild bettas in other tanks. Hope this helps …
So you should have you new Paros by now or perhaps tomorrow. Your tank is setup and ready to be their new home. You have read a lot of information on maintaining and breeding these species. My advice is to keep it simple. Do not get carried away with experiments. Use what you have learned. Get them to survive and grow and eventually reproduce. Down the road you can try other things. Good luck, home the shipment comes in without any issues.
BTW, I super glue my bucephelandra species to small pieces of driftwood and let them settle in the bottom of the tank. They seem to grow but the growth is slow … sometimes very slow. I get excited when I see a new leaf come out.That all assumes the shipper is capable of sexing the fish. My success rate was not very good in that area. I eventually went to purchasing a total of 6 each time.In those numbers, statistically you stand a very good change of having at least one pair. Depending on the tank size, in most cases I found no reason to remove the remaining Paros from the aquarium. Of course you need good cover and places for the pair to hide.
java fern and bucephelandra work well. My first java ferns were very small plants buried in the java moss. As they got larger I pulled them out of the moss and they continued to grow. The growth is very slow however. I have come to love the bucephelandra species over the past year. But it is very expensive to purchase. I know of at least one individual here in Florida that is attempting to grow a number of the species on resale basis. As hobbyists begin to successfully cultivate the plants in this country the price will come down. Currently virtually all the plants are being shipped from Borneo.
Rafael – congratulations on getting your article published. It is not often we see something published by an individual as young as you. I assume it will be only available in German?
If you want to read about culturing daphnia try going to the American Killifish site. I believe there is a great article including the photos showing the culturing setup. The hobbyist lives in Florida (year-round warm weather) and the setup is outside and maintained year round. Sorry, I don’t have the actual link to the article.
Over the years I have purchased a number of pH meters only to have them go bad very quickly. Two years ago I decided to obtain both a pH meter and a connectivity meter. A local friend of mine, who is in the water quality business, said “DON’T go cheap!” I took his advice and purchased two meters from Milwaukee Instruments. I have been very happy with both meters. I keep the on and in water all the time. It seems to help with not having to re-calibrate them as often. They do however consume batteries regularly (about once a quarter). I am told there is a transformer that you can purchase and with a little modification to the case there is no need for batteries. The pH meter is a model MW 100 and the connectivity meter is model MW 301. As I said they are not inexpensive devices to purchase. I called Milwaukee and talked to one of their sales people. I told him what I was using the monitor for and he noted that many aquarium hobbyists regularly purchase these meters from us. He made the recommendations on which models to acquire. He also indicated he could sell the devices to me directly but suggested a company that would give me a much better price and he was absolutely correct. I purchased the units from http://www.eseasongear.com with a discount of about 40% as I remember. On top of that they paid the shipping. Hope this information helps. I do believe they are available in Europe.
Some great photos of the area, but sad to see some of the senseless destruction. You comment about the red bettas near Lundu, do you mean Betta brownorum?
Sorry Lawrence … it doesn’t work. You don’t see the link at all. Perhaps Helene, when she reads this, can offer a suggestion on how to fi the problem
Those of you who are North American members and participants in the Parosphromenus Project no doubt remember my plea last month to consider making a donation to the Project. In following up on my own suggestion I attempted to make my donation utilizing the button on the homepage. There appears to be an issue in using the donation button for American Paypal clients. For some reason, our ID and password is not recognized by Paypal Germany and Paypal is not willing or able to explain why this is not possible. For those of you that have attempted and failed or are not yet made the effort to contribute I make the following suggestion.
1. Enter your Paypal account in your normal manner and sign-in
2. Select send money to a friend
3. When asked for an email address or phone number, enter the following email address peter.finke@parosphromenus-project.org .
4. Then enter the amount you wish to donate. I entered the amount in Euros and Paypal made the conversion from dollars to Euros automatically.
5. Select send … I received an email back within minutes indicating the transfer was successful. While the message indicates it may take 3-5 days for the transaction to be processed, I received a response from Dr. Finke within several hours indicating the funds were already in the account.So, it works, and it is easy to accomplish with your Paypal account. We often procrastinate in following up on tasks like this. My suggestion is, if you were planning on making a donation to this worthy effort, make the donation. Make the donation now – right NOW! Please, don’ wait until tomorrow or next week. Do it today it is vital if you wish to see the organization survive. Without additional donations the PP will be forced to dial-back the website or ultimately close down the site. Thank you for your support in advance … Happy New Year to everyone.
Dave – that does sound better and makes more sense. Unless Helene comments I will make the change tomorrow.
🙂 Lawrence has a talent that we did not recognize here in the U.S. I must have him come to my fishroom and check all my tanks with his finger!
Thanks to both Lawrence and Peter for sharing their photos and experiences with us all. It was also great to see a photo of Michael Lo. For years we have seen his photos on the internet and in publications but he is always behind the camera. We look forward to hearing for of your experiences with your allani’s as they settle into their new homes and perhaps the breeding process.
About 18 months ago I had an outbreak of Oodinium in one of my Paro tanks. I remembered reading about the use of 2-amino-5-nitrothiazole or JBL Spirohexol to cure this type of outbreak. One of the accomplishments I failed to do while on my trip to Hamburg in September was to purchase some of this product – bad me!! . For our American readers in particularly, we are unable to purchase this product legally in this country as the Food and Drug Administration has classified this medicine as a carcinogenic (cancer causing) substance. However, certain veterinarians are able to obtain this product to treat swine with certain diseases. Looking back on this situation I have major questions about this ruling. The Vet feeds this potentially dangerous drug to the pigs and eventually we find this meat as Pork Chops on the evening dinner table?? Does that make any sense at all?
