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A school of the tiny Boraras will enjoy much swimming space; less than 40 or sixty liters should not be considered. This helps with water management which is essential for successful aquaristics. Nevertheless, these fish are used to streaming waters. You must imitate that by a) streaming filtration and b) water changing as often as possible (once a week at least 10 to 20 percent is very advisable).
Now Paros: Even two Paros only, an adult pair, will represent more living mass than 20 or thirty Boraras. And in nature they live in (slowly) streaming waters, too. Nevertheless, their behaviour scheme is entirely different. Even in nature, in a streaming water body of huge space and big quantities, they are completely used to a tiny living space. When the male has found a fitting cave built of a leaf or a piece of old wood, it is happy and leaves this cave only for searching a female or near food or to put a rival to flight. Females are less restricted this way, but nevertheless they search for males with caves, too. And when bpth meet, their life is fully centered around that tiny habitat, their living room. When they spawn, this is entirely restricted to the tiny inner space of the cave; only the male is occasionally looking around for rivals or enimies. After spawning, the female leaves the cave but lingers near to it in order to take the former duties of the male and to defend the cave with male and the clutch and the larvae. When the latter get mobile, they try to leave the cave and the male cannot stop them, although he tries at first. Finally, he surrenders and leaves the cave or – more often- tries to attract another female for the next spawning or – mostly – the same female (if it has not been eaten by an enemy in the meantime).
This means: Paros have very little need of space. The only have need of very clean blackwater with stable values. As aquarium practice proves, they even do not really need the constant weak flow of the water. But they need water of best quality. This must be considered by choosing the size and the technical installation and care of a tank.
A Paro-pair is quite happy with a tiny space around that necessary center, the cave. This was the receipt of Allan Brown, one of the best specialists of these fish, observed in nature and imitated in the breeding tank. He used 5-liter tanks and had the best results for many years. He produced huge amounts of all available species, including the true deissneri or allani or rare variants as spec. Kota Tinggi. I use 10-liter-tanks (factually 12 liters) because this is a standard size for cheap industrially produced tanks; see my often published array of 24 tanks, containing altogether less water than is contained in many single living room aquaria of today. The tanks of Walter Foersch were not much bigger. The tanks of Günter Kopic, German master breeder who bred most species for the first time in the eighties and nineties, contain 40 liters.
When I recommend 20 or 25 liter tanks I recommend them because I know the laziness of humans, me included. If you will have best results and observe what is happening, no tank must be bigger. Bigger tanks are dangerous. You miss many important things, you have difficulties in feeding the tiny young adequately (if you will not overfeed, because of water quality) and you can hardly cope well with difficulties as illness or diseases or noxious developments that you have to correct for saving your valuable fish.
But the really important thing is water quality. To imitate the constant flow of best and clean blackwaters the aquarist has only one choice: that’s water change, frequent water change. You cannot reach this aim by filtration. Water change is essential.
Allan Brown, as his wife Barbare characterized him, was “a water changer”. And every successfull Paro-keeper and breeder must be a water-changer. The biggest problem with a much bigger tank for Paros is not that you miss many of their behaviour but that you deceive yourself by thinking: o, then I don’t need to change the water too often. Bigger tanks induce laziness. And that’s wrong. If you decide for Paros, you better decide for a small tank not more than 25 liters (or fifty at most, but for most intentions this is too big already; and I don’t like those people who want to create a “natural environment” without knowledge what this means for Paros. Paros are endangered species; Simply “keeping” them in a nice aquarium is not adequate for them. Then you can decide for other fish that are not endangered. You should enjoy their full life circle and that icludes breeding and breeding means: preserving, by producing an next generation).
But this means: Water changing and defeating one’s tendency to laziness is the most important thing for successful Paro aquaristics. Mind: Very small tanks could be decorated very differently and attractively, and they are much easier to handle as bigger ones. And you must handle them often if you have decided for these fish.
The newest and most complete work on dragonflies (Hansruedi Wildermuth/Andreas Martens: Taschenlexikon der Libelle Europas. Wiebelsheim: Quelle und Meyer 2014), 824 pages, ends with a chapter of the exotic dragonflies taht have appeared in Europe. Nearly all of them have been imported unintentionally by the trade with exotic plants for the aquarium. They mention 19 species of 15 genera.
I such a case as is told here the specialists would surely be happy about a note and – possibly – a photo of the larva. See the website http://www.libellula.org
All who write here on Cryptocoryne should read carefully what has been written in this forum and in the general information in the PP.
Very short:
– Yes, there are typical blackwater Cryptocoryne species. But apart from the fact that they are not traded in the aquarium shops (because they are extremely difficult to cultivate, see below) you cannot cultivate them in a normal Parosphromenus-blackwater tank.
– The species that are cultivated and traded are no blackwater species. They sometimes stand a Paro-tank-milieu for a certain time, but they don’t thrive there.
– What is the problem? The problem is the structure of an aquarium: a still-water tank without a constant supply of nutrients from the soil to the roots of the plants. A streaming filter does not change that. In a natural water that is factually nearly without minerals and other nutrients, plants must receive their mineral energies by their roots. Most blackwater habitats are without submerged plants, especially those which receive their nutrients by the roots. But sometimes, you nevertheless find fields of thriving blackwater species, often Cryptocoryne (as fuscus, pallidinervia, bullosa and others). Why? Because at all these places there are streaming “nutrient fountains” in the ground, slowly but constantly delivering the necessary nutrients that are missing in the blackwater. Nobody has managed to imitate this in the aquarium yet; a mild heating from below cannot fulfill the needs (only in a normal aquarium with normal Cryptocoryne).
– Therefore: The only efficient way of cultivating blackwater Cryptocoryne up to now is emerse culture within a wrotten beech leave-ground. But here, the leaves of the plant remain above water surface.This does not mean that cultivating blackwater Cryptocoryne is impossible forever. But it is a matter of fact that despite many experiments of the best cultivateurs and specialists of that plants (Horst, de Wit, Bastmeijer etc.) the problem is unsolved up to now. One should know this; it’s not only finding the right species, but knowledge of the differences of structure between nature and the small thing called aquarium.
Yes, the trade often invents “new species”. Mostly, this is pure nonsense, based on the trade’s interest to present new fish to a market which always is interested in “firsts” and “news”. There was one case, however, in which this was really true, and that was quindecim. All our quindecim go back to a single import of so-called P. spec. Manismata. For years we did not know their origin, for it is not at the town of Manismata in Western Borneo. It is at a place called Nanga Tayap. This was revealed in the original scientific description of Kottelat and Ng hence calling that fish rightly P. quindecim.
In a second case it is possibly of a certain amount of truth, and that is the fish we call “
I thought that the leaves were there already. But you had to add them, and therefore I have the suspicion that your male transferred the larvae somewhere unser the leaves. They like such places because they are used to them. In a tank with a photocanister only this is a suitable cave, but when leaves are added later on there are suddenly much more natural “caves”.
One should not use a thick layer of leaves everywhere on the ground if one is interested to observe the behaviour. Just a few here and there will help the young to hide; that’s enough.
I don’t think that the young have been eaten; they probably will appear some weeks later, a little grown already. But leve the canister. The pair may use it for its next clutch. Often, the most beloved caves are small heavy pots specifically made for other samll fish that rest on the ground. But Paros look for caves in the whole space from the bottom to the surface.
David, you should try to reduce the conductivity at least to half of this, doing it in several steps over three or four days. P. nagyi is not the most delicate of all licorice gouramies but we never encountered a habitat with water as hard as this.
Leave the female in if there is a good layer of leaves on the bottom and many other hiding places for the larvae (swimming plants, java moss etc.); if not you should take her out. If fed properly the females often don’t harm their offspring, but nevertheless some do actively. If you are lucky it’s more easy to let the young grow up in company with their parents: for instance, feed freshly hatched Artemia and both are satisfied. But if you are anxious, take her out. If you leave her in, you will soon see the next spawning, and so on. I should leave her, but look intensively how she behaves. If she is doing something what you dislike, you can take her out.
I yesterday phoned with friend Horst Linke. He will show us a professional video of a Parosphromenus-spawning at our first international meeting in Hamburg in September. Nice to see yours.
The question which form your nagyi are is easily to be answered as “not Kuantan” if the coloured band in the tail is correctly shown as to be not a pure white. On the other hand, in other photos there are the prolonged spines that extend over the edges of the fins (especially the tail) clearly to be seen; a feature not to be found in the Cherating-form. Nevertheless, these two forms do not indicate the full range of nagy-forms.
The solution is that there are more intermediate forms than those two. We had, some years ago, for instance an intermediate form caught by Allan Brown. In the years from 2010 most nagyi that came by the trade were called “Pekan Nenas”, and did more resemble the classical Kuantan than the rather isolated Cherating. The home range of nagyi near the eastern coast of the Malayan peninsula is quite extended, and near the northern and southern end they differ clearly. But there are intermediate forms indicating that these are not different species but variants of one species only.
We are by far not fully informed about that variety. The scientific description is fully based on the Kuantan form; it is valid but not very elaborated. My friend Dietrich Schaller (the author) wrote it many years ago not knowing about that variety. Hallmann was the first who caught the Cherating form and rightly called it “Cherating”, but in the meantime other intermediate forms have come to our knowledge.
Before naming or even defining new forms we should exclude two sources of failures that are very often made today: different age and mood of our fish and the changing impact of the art of photography, light, and the technical differences that belong to cameras and the equipment, including the subjectivity of the displays of our computers. It is very obvious that the first is involved in this case, too, as you compare the first pictures and the last. Not seeing the living fish one is incapable to exclude the second type of possible failures.
My advice is to see our Paros as a wonderful example of open questions: Science far away from final truth, and the hobby as its necessary supplement in a continuing process. Most aquarium fish do not expose such an openness; they swim around and enjoy their possessors until they die or (mostly) are exchanged against new species. We are more deeply interested in fish that still pose riddles and unsolved problems, in some cases of species identification, in others (as here) in the identification of forms hitherto named, but not as the end of the descriptive pipe, but as its beginning only.
Thijs, “soil” is not exact a concept that is helpful here. Walstads “soil” is a nutrient-rich soil for the normal aquarium with normal fish and normal water. There are Paro-aquarists successful with pure peat-soil, but I am not in favour with this practice. One cannot fight the destruction of peat bogs in Asia by destroying our European ones. Better use a pure quartz bottom, but this only will help in anchoring your plants that need this; it will not nourish them. In most of my Paro-tanks there is a bottom-layer of some millimeters up to one cm only, with leaves on most of the places upon it.
There is no serious nitrogen-problem with a well built Paro-tank, even of 12 liters only and containg one pair, since the fish are very small, eat little amounts of live food. The live food is essential; you cannot overfeed your fish. In tanks of 30 liters small (!) groups of Paros can live very well, even in company with Boraras spec. But mind: The Boraras need more food than the Paros even although they are still smaller. They swim around and need energy. Ans they prevent young Paros from growing up. I never had Paros in tanks bigger than 50 or 100 liters maximum; you cannot watch the full behaviour, and it’s a nonsense from the desire-of-space-fish-point of view; a Paro pair needs a cave and only little space around. In nature its home range is not bigger than a small aquarium. You should not keep too many fish in a tank if you intend to see the full behaviour.
Mind that they are heavily endangered fish; quite different to Boraras or Trichopsis. We don’t “keep” Paros, we care for them and see them fulfill the full life-cycle including the whole breeding program. If you leave the young in the parent’s tank, you have the advantage that feeding Artemia and Moina serves the old and the somewhat grown young; only for the first two weeks you often need still smaller food. But if the tank is decorated with Javamoss, floating Ceratopteris and leaves on the ground, there is enough hiding space for 10 to 30 young even in a 12-liter-tank. Later on this tank is too small and feeding will produce too many relics; you surely have to change the water more often.
Your remarks on the water purifying powers of some riparian plants with the main amount of their leaves above the water surface (as Spatiphyllum for instance) are mainly applyable to the normal aquarium with tap-water and not the blackwater-tank with nearly destilled water. They need a thick layer of soil for their big roots. Partly applicable is leading the air-roots of Monstera and similar plants into a tank without such a bottom, but a purely blackwater tank has much too pure water in order to nourish that plants. Nevertheles, you might experiment with this. There, you could surely care for “easy” species (as P. linkei or P. nagyi or P. paludicola, the latter living at the borderline of black and clear waters). But most of the interesting Paro-species (as the true P. deissneri, the bintan-variants, opallios or ornaticauda) need the full program of attention, the best water and the least possible germ concentration. Mind that P. ornaticauda for instance normally have clutches of ten or 15 eggs only.
The germ concentration is a very important point; it plays no role in Walstad’s book since most “ornamental” fish are able to stand high concentrations. The most useful measuring kit for Paro-aquarists wpuld be a kit measuring the amount of germs. These kits exist and are sold by a highly specified industry at moderate prices, but up to now it is not sold in the hobby shops since normal aquarists don’t need them. If they used them, they would be frightened and startled about the values quite common in nice looking brightly illuminated plant-rich tanks with a normal fish community exhibiting no signs of illness; but that is not the Paro world. The more plants requiring nourishment you try to keep in a Paro tank, the less it is an optimum for you fish. Remember: they live in small slightly floating creeks in peat bogs of the primeval forest with high concentrations of humic substances.
As the temperature is concerned: I do not use any heaters in a room never colder that 21 degrees Celsius. Sometimes it’s 24 degrees. It should never exceed 29 degrees. Colder that 20 degrees is possible for quite long a time but not half of the year. In course if time the fish will become weaker and more prone to diseases.
I fight the technique-driven ideology of the “normal” aquarium since decades. Walstad was new for America, she has many predecessors in Europe, but they are denounced as the “old” aquarium meanwhile surpassed by more “modern”, more successfull types of tanks. That’s nonsense.
The book I wrote (with M. Hallmann) on Parosphromenus, “Prachtguramis”, is intended and written as a fight against that ideology of the industry which is behind the actual trends towards big tanks, the filter-religion, thousand artifical food-canisters and liquids that the aquarist should believe to need; they are needed by their inventors only. Our book informs about these backgrounds of the fate of the licorice gouramies called economization and globalization which was an international research project I was involved as a theorist of science (read about in in THE PROJECT, see left menue) and led me to see our hobby as driven by that ideology and describe Paro-aquaristics as an alternative.
But mind: Parosphromenus are blackwater organisms living in habitats nearly free of submerged plants with water between 6.0 and 3.0 containing small traces of minerals only, no calcium. The Walstad type of aquarium is good as an alternative for that stupid technical tanks promoted by the hobby-industry, for it depends largely on the biological acitivity of the growing submerged plants. But you cannot use most of them in extremely acid Paro-waters of nearly no mineral contents, and you cannot add them by a rich soil or the products of the industry; if you do, you cannot keep that extreme values stable necessary for our fish.
However, most of my fellow-specialists for Parosphromenus and I nevertheless keep and breed successfully all forms and species in nearly techique-free tanks. All of my 33 small tanks of 12 liters each that contain most of the Paros hitherto described and many other forms not yet described are without any filtering or other technical devices; the only necessity is a frequent change of the water and live food (the live foods you need for Paros is of high value in avoiding that marketing-religion of aquarium-filtering). See my central array of 24 tanks which was published many times before.
The small tanks look very green but the plants are restricted to a few groups only that bear this water (mosses, some ferns, some hardy pieces of submerged shoots and springs, an occasional cryptocoryne. But mind: for Paros, you cannot imitate that thick cover of nutrient-rich soil recommended by Walstad or the European heroes of the natural aquarium because of the reasons mentioned above. Most aquarists are not conscious about the big differences between the structure of the natural habitats and the small glass-container we call aquarium. It should be possible to grow blackwater cryptocorynes (C. bullosa, pallidinervia, griffithii, keei and others) but this method is ripened fully for emers conditions only, not for the submersed situation. Ans the normal aquarium cryptocorynes (as for instance C. affinis ot all the forms from Sri Lanka) are used to entirely different waters; they need fertilization and do not live under the conditions of nearly mineral free heavily acid blackwaters).
Nevertheless, we can (and should) keep and breed blackwater-organisms as the Paros are very successful in nearly technique-free tanks, but not in Walstad-type. Diane’s array is meant for “normal” aquarium fish adapted to “normal” water and richly planted by submerged plants of a high biological activity. But we describe a very successful alternative to this in the “Prachtgurami”-book.
So, I support your ideas strongly in principle but that cannot be attained by the Walstad aquarium. Try our recipes for the set-up of successful blackwater tanks. The whole Parosphromenus-project is based upon this alternative to the silly fashions of the pet-industry which is part of the huge global destruction that doomes the life of the Paros to death.
Russ, they are very likely phoenicurus, the male exhibits all of the species’ chracteristics.
But I want to defend the cautious style of our census. With fish from the trade we can nearly never be sure of their true identiy. The trade has often proved the suspicion that they are unwilling or unable to give correct informations on the licorice gouramies in their tanks (“deissneri”). But this begins with the sources in Asia. This was one of the very few cases that we experienced the first import ever of a newly descrpted species bearing the right name.
Principially it is like you say, and mostly male ornaticauda are easily to be recognized as such. I can only hope that your animals which are rather young and weak (after having suffered by that illness before) will recover and get stronger by the good conditions they will finally find in your tanks.
The exporters and importers know very well that they can sell many ornaticauda at rather high a price since the fish is highly wanted but a rare offer in the trade. They catch the new generation as early as possible in order to have an advantage compared with fellow-traders; and that means the fish are very young and by no means fully developed when they get in the tanks of the traders. They easily get infested by Oodinium and are further weakened by bad or no food, bad crowding conditions without shelter and often wrong water. Hundreds recover, but other hundreds (thousands) do not. I think that yours will because they have survived until now, but it is always a risk.
In ornaticauda there is a spectacular normal sex difference in colouration as it is in most other Paro-species. But the striking thing with this species (and parvulus) is that there is a singular change of colouration in the course of display in the breeding mood: the female suddenly adopts the striking colours of the male, including that “red flame” within the caudal. This is one of the reasons which lead me to suppose that these two species do not belong to the genus Parosphromenus but are rather “Para-Parosphromenus”.
But you should (and hopefully will) experience the normal sex-difference in colouration first.
[quote=”Peter Finke” post=4685]I think that Ruinemans is different; they know what they get and sell. For many wholesalers fish are fish and selling fish is like selling tomatoes or software. But when Ruinemans got licorice gouramies they knew that these are blackwater fish living in very soft, acid waters and feed on small live food.
Although it is bad news that the fish are ill, it is good news that they did not ship them because of that. In most cases it’s Oodinium and very, very often traded Paros are infected by that. But it’s not seen by the people and often it’s not even seen by the aquarist who buys them. The cause is very often to be found in Asia already. Whereas European wholesalers as Ruinemans know well about the differences and try to act accordingly, the Asian weeks after the catch are often a martyrium for the fish. It begins with the catchers who earn cents only and often combine one small catch and others in the same bag, removing the dead every second day. Then at the exporters station, there are generally no Paro-specialists working, and many other species are their bread-and-butter-fish. Let’s not talk at all about feeding …
When the small but fine Mannheim-shop “Rasbora aquaristics” still existed, the owner Mme. Hanel mostly received Paros in the condition of illness by Oodinium. And she treated them with heat and salt before selling any of them further. My first P. ornaticauda which I got from there had such a history, but afterwards they were sound and without any illness. I am not sure it is the same this time, but I do think it a good sign that Ruinemans realized and tries to combat it. However, we can only hope they will recover.
I think that Ruinemans is different; they know what they get and sell. For many wholesalers fish are fish and selling fish is like selling tomatoes or software. But when Ruinemans got licorice gouramies they knew that these are blackwater fish living in very soft, acid waters.
Although it is bad news that the fish are ill, it is good news that they did not ship them because of that. In most cases it’s Oodinium and very, very often traded Paros are infected by that. But it’s not seen by the people and often it’s not even seen by the aquarist who buys them. The cause is very often to be found in Asia already. Whereas European wholesalers as Ruinemans know well about the differences and try to act accordingly, the Asian weeks after the catch are often a martyrium for the fish. It begins with the catchers who earn cents only and often combine one small catch and others in the same bag, removing the dead every second day. Then at the exporters station, there are generally no Paro-specialists working, and many other species are their bread-and-butter-fish.
When the small but fine Mannheim-shop “Rasbora aquaristics” still existed, Mme. Hanel mostly received Paros in the condition of illness by Oodinium. And she treated them with heat and salt before selling any of them further. My first P. ornaticauda had such a history, but afterwards they were sound and without any illness. I am not sure it is the same this time, but I do think it a good sign that Ruinemans realized and tries to combat it. However, we can only hope they will recover.
Perhaps I should in a few words explain why ornaticauda is in focus here.
It is one of the three species with a very special courtship behaviour; head up. The others are parvulus and (most striking) sumatranus, which even stands upright more than 90%.
But this is not the main point. P. sumatranus (regularly) and often P. parvulus are easier to be bred as P. ornaticauda. Even very experienced breeders have from time to time problems with breeding ornaticauda. Sometimes, it works as if there would be no problem at all. But then the series stops. And it seems to be nearly impossible to get offspring.
It is this strange irregularity that is most annoying with this attractive species. Are there simpy “good pairs” and “bad pairs” or what else is the clue to this problem? In most other P.-species we do not have such irregularities than here with ornaticauda. Up to the present day we do not succeed with establishing a sound, growing stock. On the other hand, the species is obviously present in nature with good numbers. From time to time they are exported in huge numbers.
This is the task: to solve the riddle of its irregularity in breeding success in captivity. Therefore we must try to find the explanation.
It would be first rate help, Dorothee, if you could get hold of quite some pairs. I have informed Bernd, but he replied from Tennessee that somebody else should save some pairs (for Chester Zoo and others). We surely will distribute them in Hamburg, but we surely have not enough offspring presently in comparison with the need.
If you are unsure, please write to me privately.
