[Rafael Eggli]

So… thats it for today. I hope some people will read this and maybe realise why it is important for us to participate in the census. If you have any further suggestions for the evaluation, questions or other comments, be welcome!

The graphs show that we are actiually progressing pretty well. Nevertheless I hope that more participants to the census will be found in April this year.

Also it would be interesting to learn about your theories on the development of the five mentioned species… Do you think there is something special to these five and if so what is it?
Could we find other species that relate in any kind to these specialities and that are likely to show the same future developments?
Also, what should be done for those species that seem to be vanishing?

I am looking forwards to reading your comments!

Greetings Rafael

[Rafael Eggli]

Now I go on with another aspect that the census has (unfortunately shown):

The quota of participants used to be great in the beginning when we were easily hitting the 50or 60 members that reported their stock. But over the years, we have lost ground there. This means that less people are reporting more animals since as we have learned already, the total amount of pairs has gone up in the same time.

Nevertheless, I am hoping that in the census which will soon be announced for April 2017, we will hit the 50 again and that this factor will improve in the future. I hope that I will be able to contribute to that by sharing this evaluation with you. Please mobilise everyone you know they do not participate usually to participate for the good of the liquorice gouramis.

I am now getting to the last part of this evaluation which focusses on some exemplary species. We have a few species and varieties that are kept and bred extremely well and this is amazing. However, Others are only present with a few members and it is likely that they might disappear in the near future. In the next plot, I summarise the situation of the whole number of species reported over the years.

The graph needs a little explanation:
We can see the amount of species that belong to the so called groups of endangerment. It is clear that the fewer pairs of one species is present, the more vulnerable this species or variety is. Therefore, we can see in the darkest red those species that are presently only represented by 1-3 breeding pairs. These might face extinction in captivity soon. The lighter the graph gets, the more pairs are reported. The other groups are 4-8 pairs, 9-20 pairs which is relatively safe and 21+ pairs. We find two trends here:

-firstly, more species are at the top. We never had so many species in more than 21 pairs and therefore mostly secure.
-on the other hand, there are also more species than ever in the lowest group.

This all goes hand in hand with the strongly reduced groups in the middle. Some species seem to find large popularity, perhaps these are also easily breedable. Others seem to vanish slowly but surely. We must therefore strengthen the “middle” so that more species will get to the top parts. and we must make sure that those strongly endangered species are bred again.

Now I want to end with a series of Graphs that show the development of the single species over the past two years. I want to stress you attention to five species i have marked yellow in the graphs.
These species, namely quindecim, phoenicurus, bintan, spec. aff. linkei Pangkaraya, rubrimontis and linkei, mostly from the commercial trade (ct.) have experienced the above mentioned development. They now account for more than 60% of the total stock of pairs as can be seen in the last graph from October 2016:

It is most remarkable that these five species and varieties are able to constantly keep at the good level. This is definitely a sign for actual success of the Parosphromenus project. However, as mentioned before, we must make sure that this species that are not so well represented in our stocks are constantly bred and find their way as for example rubrimontis has done.

[Rafael Eggli]

I want to give the reader an overview on the development and I will discuss the results in the last section.

Firstly, I have plotted the total amount of reported breeding pairs and the amount of species and varieties present in the stock of our members versus the time (the number on the bottom represents the number of the respective census e.g. 12 is April 2016 and 13 October 2016 :

The trend clearly goes upwards and I was happy to find that in April 2016 for the first time we had more than 500 reported pairs.

This graph directly relates to the next one which shows the number of breeding pairs per species that have been reported in average. I will comment on that more destinctively later:

Also here, the trend goes upwards despite some fluctuation.

Now I am getting to an important graph to discuss the success of the Parosphromenus project:
We want to keep the species we have as safely as possible and for a long time. Here I show the number of species that were lost versus the number of newly introduced species over the past years
We have definitely improved here because in the first years, the fluctuations were huge. Many species were lost but also many new ones came here. It is a success that in the years 2015 and 2016, always there were more species newly introduced or reintroduced to the project than were lost. It must be one of our very first goals to ensure that as few species are lost as possible.

[Rafael Eggli]

Hey everyone,

it has been a while since someone has added something here so I wanted to get this topic out again.
In the Hamburg-Meeting, I got some of the “P.tweediei” offspring from Helene. After a few starting problems they started to breed and have gotten in a really good state here so I have quite many of them. However, I never managed to capture good pictures to maybe help the determination of the exact name they should have.

Unfortunately and due to a mistake of mine, I lost many of the animals from the F2 Generation and all the older fishes this weekend. Now there are perhaps 6-8 left (there used to be around 20) and, luckily some females too. (It was a problem that more male fishes were born than females).

Now as I observed them much more since this big loss, I was finally able to get some good pictures of two males displaying so i would like to share them with you here…

So what do you think.. tweediei???

[Rafael Eggli]

Hey martin

If the parasites are actually oodinium, they belong to the group of dinoflagellates. Some of these actually do have the ability to form a cystic stage which can survive conditions the living microbe could not. Therefore and since you probably won’t be able to exactly determine what species you’re looking at, it is a good idea to wait a few days under normal conditions and then rise the temperature again.

I would go back to normal temperature for some days and then rise it again for maybe one week or so. Then I would again just watch very closely at the animals the consecutive days… if something should have survived just redo it…
My experience (not with paros) is that it can take up to four such cycles…

Greetings Rafael

[Rafael Eggli]

Hi Stefanie, i use the same one and it works really well. Now after some years i had to buy a new sieve because mine wont let the wasser through anymore…

[Rafael Eggli]

Hey,

Yes of course you can easily keep several male adult paros in one tank of that size. This is no problem if you provide enough hiding and breeding spots(tubes, 2+ per male)…

Especially if they grow up together, you can keep them without big problems. It is also a good advise to start having at least two tanks per species. If something goes wrong in one of these or if you have problems with single animals, you can seperate them easily. In addition to that, it is sometimes good to isolate younger fry from the parents if you dont have so many of one species and want to make sure as many as possible grow up…

Greetings Rafael

[Rafael Eggli]

Hi everyone, well I must admit it was a bit of a surprise to me that there was no clear rise in the number of participants that last census after bennies newsletter.
Perhaps there are more then the 40-50 regular participants. This gets obvious if one reads through the old files. When doing some evaluation for the graphs, i realized that actually quite frequently specific people are only participating about every other census. If these persons usually report a large stock, this gets obvious since the total amount of reported animals is strongly fluctuating.

Regarding the options for other ways to make the people participate i thounght about that:
Why dont we create an easier way to participate. I’ve been thinking about something like a doodle file… maybe an excell file or something of thet kind that everybody would be able to fill in their stock and comments. Maybe for some it is more comfortable to click on one single link then fill in whatever is needed and finally having it done. For the mail, sometimes it might not be clear what they have to write althoukh bennie explains it verry well in his emails. Also, such a form might make it easier for bennie to evaluate…

Greetings rafael

[Rafael Eggli]

Hey, personally I usually rinse them in a very fine sieve… there are plenty of such products around. However, the mesh width must be really small. I am not sure what with my sieve has but you will find the information in the internet or on the sieves. It must be really small so that the very youngest hatchlings do not get washed out. I rinse them with normal tap water…

[Rafael Eggli]

Hey,
This is absolutely amazing! Sometimes they really seem to need a period when you dont bother too much about them to spawn. I also think that it is most important to provide constant circumstances and water values. If as you said you only fed not so much, perhaps the pollution has decreased and they have still gotten enough to eat. It is true that sometimes, less is more!

My congratulations to your success and best wishes for the future. Lnce they have reached the mentioned size, they are very likely to survive and I think there will be others to be found in the next days and weeks…

Greetings Rafael

[Rafael Eggli]

Hey everyone!

Thats indeed great news!!!

My group is also growing and some of my offspring are getting towards maturity. I think there will be the third generation of my tweediei Ruinemans swimming around by the end of september.

[Rafael Eggli]

Hi Ghia,

[quote=”Ghia” post=5639]
As a long time corydoras enthusiast and keeper/breeder, currently with 3 tanks dedicated to these fish, I must protest. Yes, corys need acidic and soft water, but keeping them at a pH much below 6 for any lenght of time is not acceptable.[/quote]

It surely was not my intention to offend you. I must admit that I have never really gotten that much into the catfish-matter. As you say, I think pH around 6 would still be suitable for pygmaeus. Of course this is not optimal but there are still some species (linkei) of parosphromenus that can be kept at these values. They will perhaps not spawn and one has to make sure the water is really clean from any kinds of germs but for a well skilled and experienced keeper, this might work.
As mentioned earlier, I have seen such a tank that works perfectly well… Maybe Dorothee can comment on that as well.

As to Bill: From what I have read in other threads, you are not among those with a year long experience of low pH/EC aquaristics and the even a bit more special paros.

So please, once you have some, do keep them on their own and learn how to treat them correctly. A single-species tank is also the (almost) only option for you to participate in the breeding programme because only in such environments you have the total control.

Best wishes, Rafael

[Rafael Eggli]

Hey,

I think it is not really probable that any of the ancistrus-like catfish will be completely safe for paros. The only ones that might have the potential are small species of otocinculus. However, I am not quite sure if the water values would match.
Another option would perhaps be corydoras pygmaeus or the like. I have seen a tank at Dorothees with a nice assembly of acid-soft water loving fish including dwarf corys.
BUT I would not dare to expect either of the fish to spawn or to even have fry survive. Such tanks with a variety of species are certainly an interesting thing. Personally I would rather try keeping small boraras together with paros before adding anything else…

[Rafael Eggli]

Hey,

I would not say that this is insufficient but personally, I prefer high volumes of exchange water instead of slowly but surely increasing concentration levels.

Actually, the ratio between the final top point (called limes in mathematics) and the constant inflow c only depends on the amount of water changed. This means that for whatever substance you want to know about the Limes, you can always take your c and multiply it by the corresponding limes (4 for 20% water change, 1.5 for 60% wc…)

So I think with the really diffficult paros we should be aware that large waterchange ratios will be dangerous. BUT: the same thing we have discussed above can to a certain extert also be applied for germs! And we want to keep the concentration of germs low. Assuming a linear growth for germs is reasonable since low ph effectively slows down the reproduction rate of the bacteria and fungi so the natural exponential growth is pushed down. And it is mainly a high germ pressure that kills young eggs and fry of paros…

I let everyone decide for themselves how much water they want to change but it can help a lot to understand the models available for the description of our nature and aquariums

[Rafael Eggli]

Hi,

personally I have never experienced any problems with water change. Linkei are really tolerant with such disturbment. They are only very vulnerable regarding the parameters of the water, especially temperature. If the water is too cold they will stand still and behave almost “shocked frozen”. Mine could after such an event luckily recover quite well. This is also true for eggs and/or fry! They will not like a “shower of fresh water through their cave but as long as you keep the nest out of direct water movement, everything is alright!

I think that the most important thing with keeping fish is waterchange no matter what species and i always change at least 50% of the water every week. I am convinced that this is a very essential point because of simple mathematics:

There is a constant flow of pollution into the tank from food, debris and the fish’s metabolism. These accumulate during a waterchange period and are then partially removed. The important word here is partially: If before your water change you have, say 1 gramm of pollutant xy in the tank, you will remove only a fraction wich is in line with the fraction of the whole volume you remove. So if you then change 20% of the water you will end up with 0.8gramms after the waterchange. However, in the consecutive period there will be another 1 gramm added to give a total of 1.8 gramms of which you then take out another 20% which leads to 1.44 gramms and so on…

week 3: 1.952g
w 4: 2.3616g
w 5: 2.689g
w 10 3.57g

From about week 16 we are getting close to the upper limit where there is no more significant increase of pollutant xy. Its about 4 gramms. This is huge since when compared, we find that it is the same as if we had not done any waterchange for 4 weeks!!!

Now this is surprising and should be alarming. but what if we do the same for another amount of waterchange?

Say again, 1 gramm of pollutant xy is added but we do 60% Waterchanges:
week 1: 0.6g
week 2: 0.96
w 3: 1.176g
w 4: 1.3056g
w 11:1.46g
w 30: 1.499999668g

Seems like we have a limes (limit which is never reached) here again! But what surprise: its only about 1.5 gramms!!!

now what about 50% waterchange?
w1: 0.5
w2: 0.75
w3: 0.875
w4: 0.9375
w5: 0.96875
w6: 0.984375
and so on… limes: about 1 so we end up with the constant amount of 1 gramm pollutant xy.

seems cool, right? By simply increasing the amount of water we exchange, we can have significantly better results!!! and they are sooner reached so there is a lot less time in which the amount is strongly changing -> our fish can get ued to it sooner! what if we really go for it and do 70% waterchange?

w1: 0.3
w2: 0.39
w3: 0.417
w4: 0.425
w5: 0.42753
w10: 0.4285688979

WOW within only 4 weeks to a constant rate of about 0.43 gramms!!!

This has to do a lot with mathematics and numerical sequences. In facht, if you have “real data” of any kind, you can run the calculation yourself with any a bit more sophisticcated smartphone-calculator app or with old-school calculaters. Even my Texas Instruments-30 worked well here 🙂

The equation is:

a_n=(a_n-1+c)*q

with:
a_n: the amount of substance xy after n weeks/periods
a_n-1: the amount of the previous week
c: constant net inflow of substance xy (in the uper examples it was 1 gramm that came in every week) within the period
q: the fraction of the water that remains IN the tank (in my first example it was 0.8 since 80% of the water remained there) so it equals 1-the percentage you are changing.

Actually, you can also use it if you want to calculate how much fertilizer etc. your plants need to keep a certain level of plant nutrients.

Now this has gotten very long. I hope you are not bored but I think it is best to show with examples why I do the waterchanges the way I do them: 50% because the whole total will never get above the amount that would be added within 2 weeks which I find an acceptable thing.

Of course this is not a very sophisticated model of the Aquaria but it might give a reasonable idea of how we should choode our Waterchange-ratios.

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