Parosphromenus-Newsletter No. 112 
Bielefeld (Germany), November 21st, 2013
Dear friends, this newsletter will again be issued in one language only, in English. There is too much work to be done, so it will be short.
- The new census has been finished and evaluated (Fall 2013)
The second census this year 2013 has just been closed down. Again, we had a major personal change in reading the mails, combining them to a readable synopsis and evaluating the results. Christian Hinz had to quit his work for the project in order to prepare for his own future since he intends to go to Britain for studying. So we say thank you very much, Christian, for your help; we will miss you. But as you told us: In some time you will start again where you left and be with us again. But till that day we have to organize things anew.
Therefore we are deeply grateful to Benjamin Wilden from Detmold in Westphalia (Germany), now studying in Paderborn (Germany), that he entered the role of Christian’s and agreed to resume that work. Benjamin is well known to German Paro-friends since his early days as a pupil, and since then he was a constant supporter of our aims and always ready to help when help was needed. So he did not argue for long and told us that he will continue the task of collecting all the single mails, establishing that readable synopsis and try to evaluate the results. And this he did in quite short a time. Therefore, thanks to Benjamin, today we are able to send you all the result of the fall census 2013 already.
I shall not comment it here; read yourself, it is self-explanatory. The only thing I should like to add is two major stocks that are not included in the overview: First, there is the stable big stock of Bernhard Lukiewski from Berlin of P. quindecim, with at least 80 animals of all ages. Second, there is a good stock of P. nagyi Pekan Nenasi (derived from the stock of B. Bussler) of about 30 animals of all ages, a similar good stock of P. linkei (equally referring to Bussler’s parental stock) of about40 animals of all ages, a stock of about 8 pairs of P. filamentosus und 2 pairs of P. ornaticauda, equally going back to Bussler’s animals). These all are to be found with Stefan Menzel at Schierke in the Harz mountains (Germany) where the best Paro-water comes from natural peat bogs.
Perhaps there will be further stocks that have not been mailed to us in time. If you tell us, we can supply the most important of them in further newsletters.
So, please read yourself that the project is quite successful in preserving our species and keeping us up-to-date about the fluctuations of the stocks. Although one has to admit that private imports and the aquarium trade assists with some supplements.
- Welcome newsletter to new members of the Parosphromenus-project
Because of much other work we are unable to list here all new members of the project who joined us in the last months. Each person is welcome here, and to express this Helene Schoubye has designed a special welcome-newsletter to all who are new in 2013. Meanwhile, it surely has reached your mailbox if you belong to that group. And then you will know that we need some additional informations from many of you: the real name, the continent, the country and the town where you live. The Parosphromenus-project is something different than a normal aquaristic communication-project since there are a few friends of these fish only compared with thousands of other aquarists. Therefore, we try to establish communication and fish-exchange, and for this we need those informations.
- The first comprehensive book on Paros worldwide is praised very much
Please allow to repeat a major event: The only „book“ on exclusively devoted to Parosphromenus has meanwhile been published by German experts Peter Finke and Martin Hallmann at Aqualog-publishers, Rodgau (Germany) in Germany language. The title is
Prachtguramis
Juwelen des Urwalds in der Natur und im Aquarium
Licorice Gouramies: Juwels of the rainforest in nature and in the aquarium
The book has 200 pages and 202 photos. It is very uncertain whether there will ever be an English-language edition, for the realization of such a book with a great many photos on a small group of small rare fish is very expensive; the number of copies is necessarily small, too. We therefore recommend: Be quick and order one copy as soon as possible, even if you cannot read German. The pictures alone make it worthwhile. The price is 29,80 Euros. Look at www.parobuch.de for the details of payment and shipping costs. But meanwhile the book could be obtained worldwide via Amazon, too. Enter the word “Prachtguramis” at the books page.
Many grateful letters have reached us in the meantime. In the next months the first reviews will appear in the journals and magazines and we are very delighted by those we could see beforehand. The content of it is the most important thing. But I may add an information which is not unimportant either: There is no advertising in that book, the paper is good and the covers are hardback.
- Some species in trade in Europe and America
In the last months several species of Parosphromenus were traded in Europe and Northern America (wild caught offspring of this year’s spawning season). Surely they included tweediei, ornaticauda, parvulus, nagyi, anjunganensis, and maybe opallios.
Write an e-mail to distribution@parosphromenus-project.org if you are searching for a special species. I am not sure we can help you. But I am sure we try.
Best wishes until our next newsletter!
Your steering group (in charge: Peter Finke, Bielefeld/Germany).
We always welcome recommendations or proposal for improvements of our newsletter system. The versions in different languages were produced partly with the help of machine translation programs. Please excuse possible linguistic mistakes!