Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Hi,
Congratulations to this success!!
Could you try to take some pictures of your paros, especially of displaying males. I think deissneri is one of the most important species and we don’t have any of them in stock at the moment. If your animals are deissneri, we have to make sure this stock will survive! Deissneri is one of the species with the most “history” because the first species that was to be described was described as deissneri. However, it seems that many variants of any paro-species are called deissneri by the trade…
Now to your question:
As far as I experienced, paro-eggs are often of a “dusty” coloration thus, not clear at all. So this “milky” color can very well be normal. Since the eggs are now already more than one day old, they should slowly start to show a fine greyish line which is the embryo. If they are fertilized, of course. But since the male still keeps them and tends them, I do not see any reason they should not be. I would advise you to just wait some more days. They should soon hatch and maybe, they will survive in your tank.Good luck!!!
Rafael
So lets go on then with the results:
Of course, the easiest way to describe progress and success of the PP is to look at the develpooment of the total amounts of pairs and the number of participants of the census.
Her you can see how many people reported their animals each year. It is good that we hace rather constant numbers here but we should wish for increasing numbers. This would lead to a certainly more constant developpment. At the moment, those who leave eq
Here you can see the developpment. The blue Graph shows the total amount of reported pairs. It shows a really interesting behaviour and a good upwards-trend. Obviously, during some 5 years, we more than doubled the whole of our stock. Of course, all this data will show a certain statistical fluctuation. This is due to breeders who do not always report their stock because they do not have enough time or they simply forget it. But overall, the trend is really clear which is great!
Now to the not so good news:
The red Graph is almost constant with little fluctuation. This sounds good in the first moment because you might think that we succeed in constantly breed the same species. Sadly, this is not true. As the next graph shows, we have huge species-fluctuations. This fluctuation-rate has led to the state we are in that about a third of the about 60 species or varieties that have ever been reported are no longer found in our stocklists. This is a developpment we need to stop.I hope this shows how well we can use our Census-data and why it is important to keep it actual
Please ask if you have any questions or remarks on that!
I will tomorrow go on with this…I hope this is better…
OK finally I know how it works… I will go on with the really interesting graphs tomorrow…
Hi,
It’s great to hear from your future attempts to breed paros!
Actually, it is quite a tricky question. You certainly don’t want to overfeed them but they need nutrients to build eggs and spawn.
I also want to mention the fact that the amount of food needed for Paros strongly depends on the size of the adult animals. I experienced this with my linkeis that have grown to a remarkable size and therefore also need a lot of food, compared to the much slimmer tweedieis.
I always practice about the same method which seems to work pretty well. I use a really small plastic spoon which is probably about the amount of 1/4 teaspoon or so of EGGS which I put into the hatching box. Since they don’t hatch all at once, I can easily find BBS for about three days. Usually, the second day is the strongest day by means of productivity. Since the BBS loose a lot of their nutritional values shortly after hatching, I feed them before I put them into the paros tank.
This procedure leads to a pretty efficient nutrition and also to a variation in the amounts of food I give them. Sometimes, when I’m too busy, there will also be a day of starvation but that’s no problem for the adults. I use this amount of food for every tank with Paros I have but in neither of them, there is only one pair so in your case, It would be less.
I would also like to mention that, especially while the paros are growing, they need more food than they would need when they are grown up.
I think, If you observe your animals a lot, you will get a feeling for the right amount…
I also would think over your tanks size again… 7 liters is not that much… If you want to extensively breed, you need a bigger tank with many hiding places for the fry to survive and If you want to breed intensively, you will need more larger Tanks since the offspring will stop growing if there is not enough space…Hi Russ,
Thank you for that post. This is the exact reason that made me think of that possibility. I am not yet sure about what I am going to do but I think I will defenitely try to separate eggs and adults from one another next friday. I hope this will work…
Jootjes question is really interesting… Will the eggs develop without the caring of their parents?
Have a nice evening,
Rafael
Hi Helene,
I hoped to hear from you!
Yes I also thought about this possibility but I see 2 concerns:
1. There are five tweediei in this tank – two of yours sadly died probably from the stress or so. So I would basically have to completely take out all the leaves, roota and plants etc.
2. I really think that the tank I would place the eggs in is probably the most stable and also the best biologically “self-sustainig” tank. I never had big algae problems or other troubles with it and I think the Moss is of great advantage for the youngsters…
But I also really see your point so I m a bit confused what to do…
However I would also like to hear other opportunities… Even though you are the profi for these exact animals, Helene 😉
Kind regards
RafaelHi everyone,
Maurice, this is a beautiful story and you are defenitely at the right place, if you want to specialize. This is exactly the mentality we need!
So be welcome here.Regarding your initial question, I made some observations that might be relevant.
I am running 3 paro tanks with black water of ec around 10 microsiemens/cm and ph around 5.
Also, I run another “normal” tank with a ph around 6.5 to 7 with pterophyllum scalare and some catfish (L333). In both tanks, I use catappa leaves to add the beneficial substances.
I always observed that the leaves in the normal tank vanished really quickly after only a matter of weeks. In the park tanks, this takes much longer. Sometimes the leaves are still intact after a month or so. Then they start to get muddy and slowly dissolve. If there is too much of a biotilm on them, I put them to the compost. If not I leave them. I usually thought of these differences as being caused by the L333 that would eat part of the leaves. I needed about twice the amount of leaves in the normal tank as opposed to the paros.
Now, sadly the L333 died probably because of their age. I had gotten them from a private breeder who sold me his old pairs. During the few months when I did not have any Catfish in my tank, I observed the same phenomenon. Actually, I feel the leaves are even quicker dissolved. I think that the L333 always fed on the biofilm on the leaves rather than the leave substance itself. So as a conclusion I would say that yes, the bacteria developpment slows rapidly in a lower oh environment but there are still bacteria active.This is the dropbox-link, again:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv02e4mw2sactmb/Censi%202010-2015%20Kopie.xlsx?dl=0
Hello Everybody,
I would like to explain my thoughts and reasons why I decided to count the way I did. Some of you may have heard this during the meeting in Hamburg to a certain extent but I want to point it out here more clearly:
The background of this census-overview I produced and you all can access through the dropbox-link abve was to have raw numbers to get a reasonable idea of the success of the PP. As you might know, I am writing an A-Grade paper on the PP, its origin and especially its success. I want to show wether the PP is able to survive and grow until its goals are reached and what these goals are or should be.
When I came across the census I was pleased to have such data because the census is actually the only source we have on the active member developpment and developpments in stock. I soon realized the biggest problems of the census:
1. There is no easily readable overview on the “over-the-years-developpment”, one would have to open some 10 .pdf-files for a overview.
2. The only comments on the census results can be found in a second .pdf in which whoever collects the data gives a comparision of the presently reported stock as opposed to the last reported stock. There is no long-term survey. It is not possible because of problem 1.
I wanted to make the whole of this eccellent data-set more accessible for the “simple member”. Noone wants to spend hours looking for the developpment of one single species.
Then, at the Hambnurg-meeting, we came across the strange eveloppment in P. cf. filamentosus spec. “Ampah”. In this specific case, some dozens of paors had been imported 2013. These then have been spread to several members of the PP. In april 2013, some 16 pairs had been reported. As we can see in my graph, this number has gone down over the years with a constant speed, but noone reacted to that devloppment, probably because noone saw it. This finally led to a minimum of only 1 reported pair in fall 2014. Everyone at the meeting asked themselves how this could happen. We had a good stock and now it has gone. This is something we can see in further species too for example with P. cf. nagyi “Cherating” or P. tweediei “Pekan Nenas”. In both species we had a relatively safe stock some years ago and now they have gotten close to vanish or we have lost high percentages of the origina stock.
This has to be stopped and by the use of my table, we now have a possibility to track such developpments and react to them. I suggested some kind of a prewarning system. If we find significant decrease in a certain species, we should write to the people who still have a few pairs so that they should focus on these rare species more in the future time so that we can keep them in stock. I am not quite sure what number of pairs we should define as the lower minimum from when on this prewarning system should start. I would suggest a minmum of 7 pairs. If you agree with me in that point, I could overtake the part of announcing these “endangered stocks” on the forum as I will carry on with the table anyways.
And there we go: The reason why I count pairs instead of single animals should now be obvious. Any single animal is not able to reproduce neither is a unisex group. But if we see some species that is in high danger of disappearing, such unisex stocks might be brought together to increase the number of breeding pairs.
I like to think of my table as some kind of population evaluation. As some of you with a biologist background might know, populations in nature are counted and calculated through different factors and one of these is the sex ratio. A population is only as big as its breeding potential is and this is highly influenced by the sex ratio.I suggest that we look at the two different data-collection-ways like that. The census is important to find such unequal sex ratio and track every single animal. This should also make sure that unequalities can be reacted on through regular anlimal exchange. My table on the other hand is to clarify and track the overall developpment and ensure higher probability of keeping species high in stock and react on significant losses.
Hi everybody,
@Helene: yes, they have 3 caves aus well aus some leaves in the “linke-Style” that Should Provider enough space and opportunities for breeding.
@Peter: I know of these problems and i think wie just have to experiment a little and maybe my stock will produce more females than males… We will See…Hi Helene,
This is Great news!!!
I as you will remember got seven of these fishes from you at the Hamburg meeting and keep them in a 20 l tank. There Clearly was a pair but the five others Were not yet old enough for clear determination. I Now think that almost all of them are males. The pair shows occasional mating like behaviour but i could not find them spawning yet. Probably they are also not yet completely mature. Sally one of the youngsters died only a week after i got them. Maybe the Journey had been a bit too stressful for him. It had stopped eating two days After they arrived…
Good luck to you and your beautiful fish, Helene!
Hi everyone,
Also from my side I can say that the meeting was a pleasant and extremely successful event. I loved to meet all those people and had some really interesting discussions.
Moreover, I’m happy to be back home and be able to say that all the fish are doing very well. They all ate and the male shows great colors.
I would definitely join a second meeting in the future!
Rafael
Here i have an updated version now including the 2011 fall census wich i could not access before https://www.dropbox.com/s/sv02e4mw2sactmb/Censi%202010-2015%20Kopie.xlsx?dl=0
I hope this makes our whole project a bit more visible. The idea is that as soon as possible, most of the bars on the far right are dark green…
I know that the whole diagram is not necessarily representative but maybe it shows that we can definitely achieve something. we managed to keep the whole number of breeding pairs more than twice as high as it was when the censi started. The number of species has also increased and quite a few are on their way “out of the red”.
Please feel free to discuss on my results, give inputs for improvement or criticise…
