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Bill – I fully agree with your ideas.
Founding ALFA was a good decision and it will promote things, no question. But that will take time and it will be only one of more possible steps. You are fully right by mentioning others.
What you describe is more or less my program that I try to follow since 2005. There are more friends of this endangered genus on earth than we know, it’s only a matter of method how to find them. Today with the internet this must be much easier than in former times.
You are fully right in pointing out the role of our German association as a base, but that alone was not enough. It needed additional personal action (and that meant time and hard work) to collect addresses, and more addresses and more addresses. This is my business and that of some friends since 2005. If I should say what the most valuable result of the Paro-work since that time is: it’s the treasure of addresses. If someone wanted to cause a maximum damage to the Parophromenus-project he needed to steal or destroy our addresses.
Your idea to write to all the many associations and clubs is fully right. I have tried to to so in Germany, and was lucky that the German head organization of the aquarists gave support to that by opening its magazine. Unfortunately, the result was meagre up to now. But I have not done it as efficient as possible; one can do better. But I can’t, I need helpers.
And that is the problem on the American or even world-scale, too. We need helpers. I think this is the present situation: building up a group of helpers. You are one of these and Mark and some others. Now let us see what we can do precisely.
1. How should we proceed? In the world and in the U.S.?
2. What is the primary goal? What secondary, and so on?
3. How could we partition the task?
4. How could we find out the addresses of the most important associations that possibly could play a role in this?
5. In our steering groupwe have no position for a person who would work on that strategy. But we needed him (or her)! Not in the first line for Europe, but for America and for Asia!
6. Besides America the Asians are rather quiet (with the exception of Japan). We urgently needed more active correspondents in Malaysia and Indonesia.
Well, dear Bill, perhaps we should break the thing down to the nearest goal again: How to proceed for the U.S.?
More questions than answers. Perhaps you’ll have some answers?Oliver, a short reply:
1. The cave – yes, the photo is really bad, I hope to identify it correctly – is totally improper for Paros. It is a) too big. Paros prefer small caves. Mostly the smallest available are best. There are caves for small catfish on the market with openings of two or at most three centimeters that are conveniant; the smallest species (ornaticauda and parvulus) like them even smaller (opening 1 to 1,5 cm). The darker it is inside the better. Take a torch for inspection.
2. The most important part of the cave is b) the roof because the eggs are placed there. The roof therefore must be quite horizontal to prevent the eggs from gliding out. I don’t think your cave will match these conditions.
3. The colour of the gravel is of minor importance. Dark gravel is sometimes better, but we have many examples of Paros successfully breeding in tanks wirh light gravel.
4. More important is to use leaves on the ground and good wood from bogs. You don’t need a thick layer of gravel because a tank with a pH of 5 or 4 will tolerate only a few plants. My tanks have a layer of gravel of less than one cm.I am very happy about this development and, especially, the last notes by Mark and Bill. Bill has certainly listed some of the relevant causes for the situation given, but I think there are two to be supplemented.
Licorice gouramis are small fish, but not as small characids or barbs that live in big groups and swim permanently from left to right, but they are living in pairs or small, mostly hidden groups, rather slowly moving. They are too small and shy for the average aquarist. The development of cheap larger tanks has promoted larger fish, a clear interrelation.
And the second thing: Paros are not to be fed on industrial food and not to be kept and bred in most tap water. Gnenerally, you cannot put some ingredients in your water to make it suitable for Paros; that will work for many fish, but not for licorice gouramis.
Therefore I think these fish will be always remain a speciality for those who are interested in behaviour, breeding and conservation. And I think founding that ALFA-organization was definitely the right action to be taken now! It will not change things in very short time, but I could imagine that it will change things.
Anyhow: We have about one hundred specialist for these fish in Germany and only about ten in the U.S.? The United States being much bigger and with many more aquarists? I think it’s a thing to be developed and you took the right action to get it into move.Lisbeth, licorice gouramis have no special relations to the water surface. In nature, they live mostly in deeper regions (around one meter). They own a perfect labyrinth but the do not use it for the most time because the live in running waters not brightly lighted (below the shading cover of tops of the rainforest’s trees). Therefore oxygen is no problem. Even in the aquarium they don’t use their labyrinth normally; Foersch precluded the surface by a cover of glass and the fish showed no sign of discomfort over weeks; they never wanted to fetch atmospheric air. This is the same what we observe. Only in stress situations they could be forced to use their labyrinth, and then they do it. But again, they withdraw from the surface very quickly. Therefore, you cannot compare them to other labyrinths that are fish bound to the water-surface. Paros are not.
An that is the reason, too, why they nearly never leap. I never lost a Paro by leaping out of the water. If the milieu is right they live near the bottom or in the middle of the water near their small caves but seldom at the surface. And remember: Most of the natural caves are old leaves on the ground or somewhere between plants in the middle of the water. They actively avoid the surface. Maybe they have an innate idea of a kingfisher or a heron. For a Paro’s male accidentally hit by a sunbeam that penetrated the foliage of the rainforest will brightly reflect it by the phosphorescence of its finnage. Good for bird, bad for fish. So the fish have accomodated to that.I just read that you did it and founded ALFA! That’s it! Congratulations! Hopefully that will get things onwards!
Mark! What a bold and proud announcement! Congratulations! I am pretty sure that this step will get things into motion!
Without our labyrinthfish society IGL that was founded in the Swiss town Basel 32 years ago with members from Switzerland, France and Germany there would not have been that good development we had in the past three decades. There was a split off group EAC about ten years ago which itself has become rather big in the meantime.
Our Parosphromenus-project (that is no society and no association but an internet-based network including and integrating societies and associations) is a rather specialized thing, and it would not have been possible without that base IGL and EAC.
I am glad to tell that we, the Parosphromenus-project, will join your ALFA (at least in the Yahoo-group-version) and integrate the ALFA in our project-network. We shall do so that you can see it in our cooperations” – page in the next days.
Best wishes, and don’t forget the licorice gouramis in ALFA!!! (But I am sure: you won’t).Jacob, some questions:
1. Have the health problems of your fish been solved? And how?
2. How big is your tank in which you observe that aggressive behaviour?
3. Are there other fish present?
4. How old are the vaillanti?We have very little real knowledge on this temperature issue, I am afraid. What you both tell us, Hugues and Patrick, is surely correct. There is quite a lot of information on aquarium practices, but the information on the living conditions of Parosphromenus in nature is rather limited. There are reports on habitats with rather low temperatures, and there is the contrary, especially if the canopy of the wood is open or even missing. We should ask the friends in our Asian-section!! Will one of you do that? That would be fine!!
As the aquarium is concerned, I prefer the low-temperature-variant, with sometimes 21, but mostly 22-24 degrees Celsius. I have never seen a remarkable increase of courtship and egg-laying after a temperature-rise, only after a good water-change or a change of food. The experience of Hugues that the pairs often have long intervals with no courtship and spawning beetween long periods of spawning seems to be quite normal in this genus. We have to make clear that in nature most of these fish live at the longest one year, and that there is only one spawning period for them. What we have in the aquarium – no enemies and always good food and three or even more years of several spawnings – is quite unnatural for them. We certainly should try to get offspring by one of the first spawnings of them, but often that is impossible.
It would be interesting to hear from others how they think about that temperature question.The colour of light may be a problem for plants, but I doubt that it is a problem for fish. And I cannot imagine LEDs to be too bright.
But why don’t you mix both colours? I use small stripes of 15 or 20 LEDs, and one can easily mix the colours by mixing the stripes.Martin, if we normally recommend very small tanks the main reason is to guarantee a quick success with a single pair. But in nature, the licorice gouramis live together in groups of pairs, and you simulate that in your bigger tank. I remember Karen Koomans from the Netherlands reporting once a spawning of five pairs of P. sumatranus in one tank, and she got the impression of a co-ordinated action. She even managed to shoot some photos of this event. It looked rather strange seeing several males (in sumatranus they display vertically with heads up!) only separated by ten or fifteen centimeters in front of their mates.
Perhaps you will experience a similar thing now and perhaps you could document it again?[quote=”aquaristiker” post=548]”Hi, what do you mean,is this the same species? I bought 10 fishes at may 2011 (aqua-tropica, Nürnberg) We named P. spec. aqua-tropica05/2011.”
Nobody has an opinion about? Hendrik[/quote]Surely one of the many bintan-like variants that are to be found on Sumatra and in Kalimantan. I think this is the spec. Sentang which is distributed by trade quite widespread in the last two or three years. Especially Aqua – Tropica sold it in high numbers. But there might be a slight colour variation indicating a different locality than those fish came from that were traded in the last years.
Couldn’t you try to ask the trader where the fish have been caught? It would be good to know whether on Sumatra or in Kalimantan.In Britain you have a fine journal, too: “Labyrinth”. And I have a good news for you: David Armitage, the editor of “Labyrinth” and our friend in the Parosphromnenus-Project, is preparing a special issue on Licorice Gouramis only, using some of the general texts and all the texts on the species that I wrote here for our website, in the translation of Christian Koepp and himself. It will be a nice booklet and it will surely promote the Licorice Gouramis in Britain! At present, he is looking for some photos, still. But the booklet will appear in 2012, I am pretty sure!
Yes Martin, that’s it! They did it, you did it!
A leaf is often the better cave, quite natural. In the home waters they obviously spawn very often below a leaf.Kindai, whom do you mean? Me? I don’t use any filters or air-pumps. Certainly, the licorice gouramis come from floating waters and they like that in the aquarium, no question. But they display and breed in my small stagnant waters, too. The only thing is that a small bubble-filter would make things a little easier for the aquarist by reducing the intervals for water-change. But it’s too noisy for me since the small tanks are part of my working studio.
And the neccessity for maintenance measures is quite diversified. Some tanks with a mass of Ceratopteris spec. will stand long-time stable and with only little germ-load, while others, mostly with less active plants, must be cared for every two weeks.Fine, clear photos of fish of the bintan-group. Since there are no markings whatsoever in the fins, all seem to be females. And definitely not the fish that since 1998 are called deissneri. Even the females of this species must show a short filament in the caudal fin. In Kottelat and Ng 2005 it is correctly stated that we need males to discriminate the species within the bintan group. Therefore these females could belong to bintan, rubrimontis, alfredi, tweediei, opallios and more than ten further “other forms”.
But it’s quite the usual experience with the trade!
