Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
1. The Paro book is in German, but it can be bought by Amazon (mentioning an easy method).
2. C. wendtii is not a blackwater plant. You could try it, but remember that it is dependent from nutrional sources that hardly can be combined with a stable blackwater milieu. You will not meet an optimum for both Paros and C. wendtii from Sri Lanka clear waters.
3. Peat is not peat and sand is not sand; this information is not precise enough. But I am more interested in the height of your bottom layer. You don’t need a normal aquarium’s height. It could complicate the care to large an extent. If you want to breed your fish, you should begin with an optimum environment for them and not with a compromise. The fish-plant-combination that we like to see in aquariums is a gardening-idea; the peat bogs look entirely different.
4. “tons” of leaf litter?
5. If there are a few submerged plant in peat bogs, surely not C. wendtii. Until now we cannot reproduce the milieu for the special crypts of very acid milieus. They are sometimes cultivated in emersed a form in special materials, but I don not now of any stable and easily managable method for submerged forms of e.g. C. pallidinervia or C. bullosa.
6. I like Walstad, but she writes on a normal planted aquarium and does not treat a blackwater milieu with pH often below 5 or less and nearly no minerals in the water. She would warn us to create such environments if plants in mind.
7. Nearly all Caridinia spec. cannot stand such a milieu for longer than some weeks. One of our next tasks for research is to determine which shrimps live in the Paro-biotopes. There are often lots. Hitherto they are not available in the aquarium trade.It’s good that you will concentrate on breeding. Then you should follow the hints that Martin Hallmann and I give in our Paro-book (P. Finke/M. Hallmann: Prachtguramis. Aqualog 2013; available for example by Amazon).
This means: nearly no substrate (a layer of one cm only or nothing, you should use no plants growing in the ground; they always influence the environment (some floating Ceratopteris or Javamoss are good), ten or fifteen dried leaves of beech or oaks instead on the ground, a cave, wood possible freshly taken from a peat swamp (old dry wood may change the water parameters to large an extent), a leaf of Terminalia catappa on the back glass, some alder cones, that’s the essentials. When you are more experienced, you can make exeriments with mor plants, but you should omit the Crytps. In most Paro-biotopes are no submerged plants; they don’t need them. Try to forget the traditional way of aquarium set ups; it’s blackwater aquaristics which you are going to be acquainted with.
Normally, licorice gouramis don’t die by a rising pH but by illness. But the rising pH can lead to illness. Not because of the pH but because of a grossly rising amount of germs.
Therefore it is necessary to identify the cause of the rising pH; Deepin’Peat gives some possible explanations. But I like to add that the most frequent cause of dying licorice gouramies is Oodinium that is much suppressed by a low germ concentration in a pH below 7 and much developed by a quickly rising concentration in a pH above 7.
And one should further know that a presence of these noxious little beings is hardly or not at all to be seen during the first one or two weeks. We see them on the fish’s skin only later (if we look at them very closely), but when we see them it’s mostly too late. This is a common experience of the most experienced breeders.
Therefore: Do every thing to prevent a pH rising above 7.0, better above 6.0. The most important reason to take care for a low pH in the tanks of our fish is that they are evolutionarily accustomed to such an often very low pH for just this avoidance of germs that cannot live in this milieu.
You present to us a picture of Michael Lo (“Jungle Mike”) showing a licorice gourami from Belitung. The only thing you can tell is that the fish is a male.
The colouring of that fish is not the normal one to be seen in a bigger tank with means to hide showing the typical Belitung species, but it is the typical fright-colour to be seen immediately after the catch in the small container used for photos. It’s no speciality. Nearly all licorice gouramis look like this when frightened by the catch. It is impossible to distinguish several species of the round-tailed forms of the bitan-harveyi-group when the photo is taken in such a situation; they alle look nearly the same.
And we too know that there is one licorice species living on Belitung; first photos of it (by Horst Linke) were published at different places, e.g. our AMAZONAS-special on this group. It’s not identical with P. deissneri which is endemically living on Bangka island only. Maybe, the Belitung species is identical with P. bintan which seems to have spread to different places. But this is unclear.
Nevertheless, it’s good to see such a fish here. But the explanation is that I gave: it’s a frightened fish.
Fine new statutes you did invent, dear Peter! We should take them over immediately!
Three tasks that prove the fundamental requirements of people who have applied for becoming new members of the Parosphromenus-project? I suggest the following:
1. Measuring and mailing the exact water parameters including conductivity, pH and germ concentrations at least on one important location!
2.Identifying the main food items for the licorice gouramies at that location (for you once presumed they had been changing, too)!
3.Catching and removing potential raptors of our preferred fishes from below (e.g. Channas) or above (e.g. Kingfishers or Herons) and fixing names of strangers strolling around with unknown intentions!
And if there is a little spare time: Looking for the next draining unit and destroy it!
What do you think, Peter?
Yes, I am sure Lawrence and/or Jit will correct the omission at least of the first point as soon as possible…;-)These pictures change the situation indeed. I am sure Peter Beyer measured the water parameters; he always does and one always should. I presume that the extreme blackwater that was formerly typical for both sides is no longer present, at least to pH must have risen quite an extent. This would explain the presence of such species as Trichopsis and the absence of the traditional Paros.
It’s good to see some movement in our Asian forum thanks to Peter Beyer and Lawrence. Not to find any Paro happens quite often at certain sites; it depends heavily on the season and the water level. But in both cases there might be other reasons in the background: more damage to the blackwater feeding sources.
Therefore, Lawrence, it would be nice if you could have a controlling view on these two sites …. Aber Peter of course, if you are back again here one day.P. bintan is nearly a mysterious species as is P. deissneri, but for other reasons.
In 1998, there was a scientific redescription of the first Paro that was found in the 19th century already and named “deissneri” at that time by Peter Bleeker. But it was a female! And in the nineties of the 20th century, the holotype in the natural history museum of Amsterdam was damaged to such an extent that it was impossible to decide which of the two species known from the island Bangka it has been. So, Kottelat and Ng decided that the one with a clearly pointed tail with black filament should be deissneri, and named the other with a round tail newly: P. bintan, since they knew it from another island, too: Bintan.
But what they didn’t know at that times was that there were quite a many new forms to be discovered on other islands , too, e.g. spec. Belitung on the island of Belitung, or spec. Pemantunglumut on Borneo, or even at least seven new forms on Sumatra: spec. Pelantaran, spec. “blue line”, spec. Sentang, spec. Dua, spec. Sungai Bertam, spec. Langgam (now named P. phoenicurus) and spec. Danau Rasau (now named P. gunawani).
Since 2005, their last publication, the description-machine of Kotellat and Ng has stopped, since they see that their limited methods of looking at outer (= phenotype-)features (structure of the fins, colouring of the males) in order to describe species has come to an end. Seeing that we find more forms when we search more intensely in hitherto unsearched regions, and seeing that this is rather young a genus obviously heavily in current evolutionary development, they saw the borders of their decription method and became quiet. The only two decriptions since then were that of gunawani and phoenicurus by Schindler and Linke 2012; but both new species may have been decribed prematurely: phoenicurus as a evolutionary variant of tweediei and gunawani as an evolutionary variant of bintan. But speceis of their own already? Question mark.
And this is the real question: What do we make of the many variants of bintan that we know today (as there are Dua, Sentang,”blue line”, Pematunglumut, perhaps gunawani and others)? Is bintan really one species distributed on all those islands (that not have been islands 10.000 years ago) developing presently in slightly different variants, or are those variants already new species? We (and Kottelat and Ng) do not know this at the present time, and therefore have become more cautious than formerly in saying: this is P. bintan. Certainly, the fish from the island Bintan will be bintan, but are the fish from Bangka really the same as Kottelat and Ng thought in 1998? These two decribers have become much more reserved nowadays than they were fifteen years ago, seeing all those new forms.
Therefore Helene’s cautiousness to speak of a bintan-like form or a scheme fitting in the pattern of the bintan-forms is fully right and Bill’s taking her to have said: “it’s bintan” was premature and not justified. The fish may be “blue line” or Sentang or Sungai Bertam which all were traded already; it’s even possible they are gunawani or even phoenicurus: the latter traded indeed last year for the first time (and easy to be recognized by the many red colouring of the males), the former not surely traded the year before, but definitely named “gunawani” by traders who like to use new names in order to sell their fish.
The conclusion is: Our genus is very interesting indeed since one is for sure: it’s developing. Every river-system that survived the big destructions until now and not linked with the next may hold Parosphromenus that just presently develop new features and will be a new species at some time in the future (maybe today already, but we do not know that presently for sure) under one condition: if the big destruction gives it enough time. And this is the real problem: Man – we – do not any longer give evolution the time she had for thousands of years. Our genus shows: she can be very fast, faster than we thought formerly, but nevertheless too slow for cutters of the rainforest and street-builders and land-drainers and … fish-describers with more differentiated methods.
I am a friend of Bernd and an admirer of his successes and his devotion to our fish since many years already. This is exemplary in the world of the Paro-enthusiasts.
But I want to repeat that the ease of the old aquarists to recommend peat for filtering and other purposes in aquaristcs is for ever gone. We have a problem if we condemn the destruction of peat swamps in South-east Asia, the habitats of our Paro-fishes, on the one hand, and buy peat for our nice aquariums on the other. Although it is a tiny quantity in relation to the mass which is used for burning or gardening or medical reasons (peat-baths), it is a step in the global destruction of the peat heritage on our earth.
Why not say: Goodbye peat, rest in peace where you originated by nature in some thousands of years; it was nice, you were very helpful to us, but nowadays we don’t need you any longer for gardening, bathing or fishkeeping. There are other measures which could be applied for the same aim.
A short supplement to my former posting.
The conductivity value of 9 in your linkei-tank is too low, I think. P. linkei do not need that, and in order to keep the pH stable it should be alittle higher, at least 20 or better 40 Microsiemens. But I must admit: it’s an advice from a precaution point only.
I have never experienced in a good blackwater aquarium such things happen as a sudden decline of the pH to really dangerous values, as it sometimes ahppens in normal aquariums. The one thing is that our Paros are accustomed to very low values; the other is that the leaves, the humic substances and other organic material is buffering the system against heavy oscillations. To a certan extent the humic sustances have a similar function than the calcium has in other water systems: to prevent too heavy fluctuation of vital values. Not in detail, but in the general result: keeping the system within boundaries that are suited to its inhabitants.
Dorothee, I like this mailing of yours very much. Reading it, one can imagine how intensely you try to cover the special needs of our fishes. And there are some questions open.
First, the peat granules. Peat is not peat, the quality differs very much. Your contribution tells us that even peat granules manufactured especially for aquaristic purposes are sometimes not to be recommended. It proves that the aquarium industry is not really conscious about the needs aquarists have, but vey conscious about their own needs: to sell and to earn money. Good peat does not enlarge the conductivity, and only this quality should be used for selling to aquarists. But they sell everything what looks like “peat” and could be transformed in those granules, one package looking like the other.
Sometimes you can be lucky and get good peat much cheaper in the gardening shops (if you manage to avoid stuff which is enriched with minerals and fertilizers), but often you have the same problem. I suppose it is connected with the fact that harvesting peat is no longer as easy and cheap as it was decades ago. In principle a good development, conserving the peat swamps in our own countries. But isn’t it necessary, consequently, to think of using peat at all for our aquarium purposes? I don’t use it any longer since years. To lower the pH we have alternative means. I admit, the acids must be tested equally whether they are good for our purposes or enhance the conductivity, too. But there are forms that are quite OK, and with respect to the very soft waters we have to be influenced, only very small quantities are necessary.
Secondly, the conductivity. Your osmosis plant does work very well if you receive 9 Microsiemens/cm. I know of no natural Paro-habitat that had lower values. But for aquarium purposes I think this is too low, for the small amount of water is not capable buffering the many influences by feeding, dark-light-changes and corresponding plant activity. For most species of Paros a pH between 20 and 60 seems to be quite in order; there may be some (ornaticauda, parvulus, maybe some variants of the bintan-harveyi-group, including phoenicurus) that should be bred in water not exceeding 20 to 30 Microsiemens. So, normally you should add a small amount of tap water to the water from the osmosis-plant; but I think you do anyway.
Thirdly, water change. The first is (and you say it yourself), we cannot measure everything that happens in our tanks. Most of the daily regular or irregular procedures influenced by the feeding of our fish or the activity of plants remain hidden for us. Therefore, the regular water change that you practice every week is good, better: It is exemplary. You must be praised for it. It’s a very good example for newcomers.
But we all know that this regularity is hardly to be sustained if your array of small tanks becomes bigger and bigger. You can do so caring for three or five small Paro-tanks, but when there are twenty or more, it becomes impossible.
Now, experience shows that our fish don’t die immediately if you change to longer intervals in water change. This is indeed recommendable if your fish breed nearly continously. This is not the case in nature; they breed after the raining season has begun, breed for some weeks, and then stop. If they survive their first year (most do not) they breed again in the next season, not earlier. Mostly, the next generation is more or less the next breeding generation.
This is entirely different in the aquarium. We are used to have the same animals for years. And continous water change in combination with continous good feeding often results in continuous breeding. This in unnatural and will result in earlier illness or death. The consequence shoud be that you shoukld not try to keep every Paro-tank continously at the same optimum level, but to allow some of your fish from time to time a resting pause as they know from nature.
This amounts to the following: Beginners must learn the regular, continuous water change and the continuous feeding with changing food of high nutritious value. But having learned this, they could or should decrease their striving for a permanent 100 percent optimum of all water and food values to a system of changing levels that does resemble the natural conditions better than the all-time 100 percent system. This does not mean to forget about water change, of course not, but it may be helpful for your fish to reduce the intensity for some weeks (even months) and to enhance it again after that time in order to stimulate your fish to a new period of breeding activity.
So I conclude that you could indeed omit water change fpr some time, but you must watch your fish intensely. Illness begins hardly to perceive, Oodinium for instance could take over but you do not see it directly on your fish for long a time. If they scratch on a plant or a piece of wood it is the case. It’s better not to wait for this. Therefore, I have once argued for measuring the germ density (which unfortunately is not offered by the aquarium industry because they like dying fish: You must buy new ones). If there woud be more blackwater enthusiasts they would have discovered that market-gap, for sure. In the internet, you can find that good kits for measuring the germ density are offered by several manufacturers. They are equally easy to handle than the pH- or hardness-kits.
But you can do the most by good, close, intelligent observation.
Yes, we have comparatively little information about this species, but mind that it was discovered some years ago only. OK, it was once found (ca. 1990) and privately imported before already, as “P. spec. Jambi”, but then the few fishes were seen by a few people only. Some years after a second form from Jambi was found (ca. 1994) and named P. spec. Jambi II”. That was all. There was never a commercial import, both forms died out soon after those small private imports of a few specimens only, and they were forgotten. This was quite a normal thing at that times, because we had only a few enthusiasts in Germany and Japan, and Sumatra was rarely visited by them at the end of the 20th century. The Germans preferred West-Malaysia, and the Japanese Borneo.
Only in 2008 Horst Linke decided to travel Sumatra extensively, and within two years and three journeys he found at least seven places that nobody of the Paro-scene had visited before (in search for Paros), and he forund new forms that nobody had seen before (as the now-called P. phoenicurus, for instance). And he rediscovered the place of P. spec. Jambi I and P. spec. Jambi II. The first one produced the first Jambi-fish we have had once before in 1990, and he called it with a better provisional name: P. spec. Danau Rasau. The second produced the second Jambi-fish from ca. 1994, and was now more exactly called P. spec. Sungai Bertam.
But he brought only a few fish home, and I recieved some of the first of the two, spec. Danau Rasau, and bred them. A very nice bintan-like fish, but with a stouter body, rather big and a bit more colourful, with a nice reddish-brown border at the edge of the dorsal. The sad rest I have told in that other mailing.
When the fish were gone again, Linke travelled in 2011 once more Jambi/Sumatra, but managed only to catch three spec. Danau Rasau, all proving to be females.That is it up to now. I think that the fish traded as “P. gunawani” a wrongly named; it is not the first time that the exporters try to sell their fish by using a new name that sounds more interesting than “bintan” or “deissneri”. The scientific decription published in 2012 by Linke and Schindler rested on that privately collected material. (One cannot base a scientific description of an new Paro on trade fish). I think that it is a sound description, but the fish was probably never after imported by trade. Although the commercial fish-seekers have discovered Sumatra in the meantime (partly because of the big destructions in Western Malaysia and Kalimantan, resulting in fewer and smaller catching grounds), they concentrated fully on P. spec. “blue line” (especially 2005 – 2008) and afterwards P. spec. Sentang (“sintangensis”, 2008 up to now). The reason is quantity.
With the exception of P.phoenicurus which was traded last year for the first time commercially (why? because of its nice red colours!) all the other Sumatranian forms occur at limited small locations only and species were never (P. gunawani, P. spec. Dua) or rarely (P. sumatranus, the most interesting!) traded. That is all. In my opinion the species is not present in any tank now. Some think to have them, but they are victims of the trade’s usages. (I cannot prove this, but it seems most likely to me).
But this makes Paro-aquaristics interesting and suspensive up to the present day.
Of course there are photos. You cannot decribe a new species nowadays without including photos. One is shown in our species description. It was taken of the specimens which were brought to Europe by its discoverers, and it is shown in the scientifis species descrition by Linke and Schindler, too.
I had my P. gunawani from this small stock of animals wild-caught by my friend Horst Linke at the original location, and bred them without any difficulties. But then, things happened that often happen: I gave them away and the parent fish and their offspring were lost completely by the new owners.
This photo and othere photos (including a female, a freshly caught individual and photos of the original places and catching situations) ate to be found an pages 415-417 of Linke’s “Labyrinth fish world”.
All other photos which I have seen in the net proclaiming to be “gunawani” are definitely or most probably not that species. The trade likes to sell “new species”, it’s a marketing gag. But since there are good photos of the original individuals, one can easily tell those to be wrongly named.
(!) Mind that we communicate with friends in more than 35 states in the world on all continents. Please use English as your language for communication.
