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That’s a good contact, and it’s wonderful to read “neu, aber begeistert” = new, but full of enthusiasm!
We all hope that your enthusiasm will last for a long time. Many aquarists are enthusiastic for certain fish only some months, and then they change to other fish. In the Parosphromenus-network this is similar, but nevertheless most realize that we need a longer duration of the enthusiasm. So let’s hope you will have success and will stay and become one of the New generation that looks beyond the boarders of the present aquarium!
Good luck!Jacob, I told you earlier that such scratching can have many causes but the main in Oodinium. In the first stages the parasites are too small to be seen with our normal eyes. We had many cases whre even the best experts didn’t see the picture they knew as standard-appearance of Oodinium, but being the best they new: that’s Oodinium, an indicator of some sort of weakness. You may have provoked that but your mistaken measuring of the false pH.
And therefore I advise you once again to get hold of the only medicine really of help, namely the substance 2-amino-5-nitrothiazole. I even told you a producer (in a former posting). The original substance will not be sold in aquarium shops but in drug stores and shops for veterinaries.
But in Europe there are two or more producers of pet fish medicine, Tetra and JBL for example, who use that substance (and nothing else) for special products of them, namely “Hexa-Ex” (Tetra) and “Spirohexol” (JBL), but those medicines are not sold against Oodinium (there are others, but mostly they don’t work, forget them all), but they are sold against the “hole-disease” of Discus. Forget it and buy it: it’s an effective and safe medicice against Oodinium, especially in that early stages.
There must be American partners of these big companies. Perhaps you try to find them out in the internet. The websites of the aquarium products producer Tetra and of the aquarium products producer JBL will probably lead you towards that goal.I am extremely grateful to our friend C. Way that he opens this necessary discussion here. The ethics of excursions and fishing in threatened regions is a major topic nearly never discussed. We should contribute small pieces, nobody could treat the issue in general and comprehensively.
One very important point seems to me to be the difference between a private excursion for scientific reasons or the love of nature, its plants and animals, and excursions for commercial reasons. I think we should concentrate on the first. It does normally exclude heavy impacts on the habitats, but this could be a first statement of conduct we could possibly all agree with.Congratulations first! Do you try to raise them in the same tank? Yes, it’s possible, but sometimes the old eat the young and sometimes they don’t.
But then there will be the next spawning, you are quite right!Dear Kindai, we forwarded your wish to our friends who will visit the region again. Yes, it would be marvellous if they/we could be accompagnied by you next time!
In a mail to me our new member Xi Wei Soo from Selangor, Malaysia, post code 47100, writes:
“Selangor going through lot of development over the years, most significant part is around Sepang and Cyberjaya area where B. Livida was once found there. For my short 4 years playing with wild betta, I never had the chance to visit any localities of paros and wild betta apart from B. Imbellis and B. Pugnax, although B. Livida is the first species I bred (…).Looking forward to keep and breed Paros Alfredi, Tweedei, Rubrimontis, Bintan as well as Harveyi”
Perhaps there is a contact possible between you guys over there? It would be nice if the “Parosphromenus-Project” could help with establishing those contacts!
O I admit: it’s a ridicoulous expression! I only meant that one should not take the “vinegar eels” for microworms. In the aquarium literature both are sometimes mixed up!
Your other remarks are surely helpful for beginners, so it’s good you spoke about that!Yes of course, if it’s the true vinegar eels. They are pretty small compared with the similar “micro” living in oat-substrate.
Patrick,
1. extensive breeding (young in presence of the adult) is always a risk. A third fish increases it.
2. At best you remove the adult fish when the larvae have hatched, become dark and begin to swim within the cave (= as late as possible).
3. You can do it the other way around: remove the cave with the larvae inside (as late as possible).
4. A good technique is using a round glass (about two liters). At first take the water from the original tank. Give two small snails.(Your 5 Liter glass may do, too).
5. The young feed best on Rotatoria; one can catch or breed them.
6. Alternatively, you can use Paramecium. Set up the breeding of them early enough!
7. If you have smallest Artemia (San Francisco) you may be lucky the young eating them at once; otherwise after a week or ten days. But use only freshly hatched nauplia.
8. The round glass has the advantage that you can stir up the water once a day, wait for sinking the debris to the middle of the ground, and remove it with a fine tube.
9. The water should be filled up with the same values as in the original tank, but pure osmosis-water is mostly perfect.Maik, its clearly anjunganensis, a young male. This species is widespread in the trade in Europe, presently.
But let’s try to write in English (if possible). Mind that this is an international website including many readers in Asia and America and you are writing in the “global”-category. Otherwise, you should write in the “European”-category. Exceptions are allowed, of course; for that reason we have included Google translator.
But you are very welcome, without question! See you in Hamburg.O good it’s Ephemeroptera and not Dragonfly-larvae! I hadn’t understood it before, for two reasons: Even the smallest Dragonfly-larvae are too big for Parosphromenus, and: they are strictly and rightly protected!
Jacob, since this is a Parosphromenus-site and not a Sphaerichthys-site, I cannot exclude special problems with the latter. On the other hand, this is unlikely. But Sphaerichthys are known to be extremely sensitive to skin parasites, and your descriptions, if correct (some good photos would be helpful), seem to indicate a series of subsequent events: first a small lesion, followed by a bacterial infection, and now a funghus. Such a series is highly probable with delicate fish, and the first cause may lie well in the past (before swimming in your tank). This happens rather often by the massive environmental changes (going through several tanks in the import stations and in your tank, at last).
But it is difficult to tell now the best remedy. If you treat the funghus, you may succeed with that but may not act against its causes. If you take measures against those (probably ich or Oodinium) you may not heal its cause and surely don’t treat its consequence, the funghus. If you use several medicines at the same time, you may stress the fish too much and risk antagonizing effects. If you do nothing you may risk secondary infections with the other fish of the group. So what would I do?
I would separate the fish by not catching it with a net but with a glass catching item in order not to touch the fish’s skin. Use strictly the same water by transferring it from the old tank into the new. Then, if it proves to be funghus, I should treat that with a funghicide sold in your aquarium store. If the symptoms disappear, wait and observe. The fish may recover. If it doesn’t, you must treat against the basic infections, but first determine what it is.
If it proves to be Ich or Oodinium, try to get Tetra Hexa-Ex or JBL Spirohexol. If you don’t get it, try a veterinary or a pharmacy, and order “2-amino-5-nitrothiazole 97%”. This is the active substance contained in the two named before. A producer is called Sigma-Aldrich Logistik GmbH, Kappelweg 1, D-91625 Schnelldorf (Germany). The product referece is 133507-25 G. I am pretty sure that there are other producers, too, and, of course, in the U.S, too.I am a lover of Parosphromenus and a lover of Cryptocoryne. But apart from some odd single plants I have up to now not succeeded in keeping and propagating both in one aquarium. It sounds ridiculous, but the answer is the substantial structural difference between the running waters with their constant new fertilization in nature and the very different rather stagnant waters in an aquarium, especially a Parosphromenus-tank, where you are forced to keep fertilizers rather far away.
I know of a chap (a Cryptocoryne-expert who claims to have a solution for both but I doubt it. It would be nice and near to the natural models but the solution seems to need unusal large efforts.
At any rate: carefully remove the substrate in which the plants have been grown!The Asian exporters (not importers) mostly know very well the localities, because they know the local catchers and see who delivers and who doesn’t. But they are quiet about this; it’s a business secret. There could be a competitor trying to seek an easy way to find out about productive places. Generally, the species are orderly defined, with the exception of “deissneri”: The redefinition of this species by Kottelat and Ng is widely not understood, so most Parosphromenus of the bintan-type run still under that wrong name. And only very seldom some people catch on Bangka island (the only place of the real deissneri’s ocurrence. There is not much else to be caught, so it’s economically worthless). As localities are concerned, only the most general origins are known and given (“Kalimantan”, “West-Malaysa”, “Sumatra”), often less. The precise differentiation of localities which we are interested in because it could be of evolutionary meaning, is nothing which matters there.
When the fish arrive in Europe or America, the importers and wholesalers take the names written on the parcels, and since more precise localities (“where the fish have really been caught”) are not given this remains a secret. For most aquarium fish, no one is interested in such matters. This is different with us strange girls and guys, the friedns of the licorice gouramis. Therefore, sometimes, a local pet shop owner telephones with the wholesaler on this issue, but when the place is unknown to the wholesaler (which is mostly the case) that questions remains unanswered. Only in a very few cases one could get a little more information.
The conclusion is: Those populations and lines derived from fish with a clearly given origin are especially valuable, although the fish are not more beautiful than others. Mostly a simple equation is true: Fish from the trade are without locality, and fish with locality are not from trade-origin but offspring of inividuals that were self-caught by one of the enthusiasts of the Parosphromenus-project.
