Details

Pub­lished: 15 June 2023

We would like to great this fine ini­tia­tive by Brian Mar­tineau in the States. For all of you who are based there, please have a look and sup­port /​join this effort to help the con­ser­va­tion of the parosphromenus species in The united States

https://​parosphromenus​cen​ter​.simdif​.com

Details

Pub­lished: 12 Jan­u­ary 2023

Details

Pub­lished: 04 Jan­u­ary 2023

We wish you all a very happy New Year,

At the same time we would like to wel­come Malmø Museum Akvar­ium as a new partner.

On dec.1.2022 — 6 breed­ing pairs of P. deiss­neri trav­elled from Copen­hagen to Malmø, where they will be part of a breed­ing project. Below you see some pho­tos of the begin­ning pro­ces of set­ting this breed­ing sta­tion up, — its look­ing good and promising.

Also some P. linkei is now in Malmø, to be part of an exhi­bi­tion tank, where the plan is also to intro­duce the vis­i­tors of the museum to the crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion of the nat­ural biotopes of parosphromenus, the peat swamps etc. We are look­ing for­ward to fol­low­ing this project as well along the way, as it develops.

Thanks to the ded­i­cated team at Malmø for engag­ing in this work — its exting to see

.

Details

Pub­lished: 04 Jan­u­ary 2023

Shar­ing here a link to a youtube video from a con­fer­ence in VDA recently, where Ben­jamin Wilden par­tic­i­pated from the Parosphromenus Project. The video is in ger­man, but we will later post some more infor­ma­tion about this con­fer­ence, and other pre­sen­ta­tions on the con­fer­ence, which has some impor­tance for the PP as well.

https://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​h​n​_​B​4​Z​K​9​7​J​M

Details

Pub­lished: 09 Novem­ber 2022

Parosphromenus spe­cial behav­iour 3

How much can you bend a fish : ?

Just look at these pho­tos of small paro-​males when they embrace the females dur­ing the actual mat­ing, — and you will see how much the male and female can bend around each other in mat­ing — it is quite impres­sive if you have the luck to see it or catch it on photo.

Also impres­sive is how the male, after the female have pro­duced the egg, will bend it body so as to catch the eggs on his side, before together with the female, putting them in the bub­blen­est cave which he has build for this purpose.

Pho­tos Olivier Per­rin 1. P. alfredi 2. P. parvulus

Details

Pub­lished: 09 Novem­ber 2022

Parosphromenus spe­cial behav­iour 2

Sexy eyes

Flash­ing in paro species, is known as one of the fas­ci­nat­ing and won­der­ful char­ac­ter­is­tics of the parosphromenus species. The way the male tries to impress a cho­sen female is often spec­tac­u­lar and often done with a lot of energy

But did you know, that when the male and female are approach­ing actual mat­ing, — they show their readi­ness in par­tic­u­lar ways, — one of these fea­tures being the appear­ance of a black bar occur­ring ver­ti­cal in the eyes. This is both male and female that does that.

It gives the fish a cer­tain look, quite ‘cheeky’, — and for those who have had paros for some time, they know it as – and call it it — ‘sexy eyes’.

We show you a few pho­tos here, and you can judge your­self what do you think  ?

Pho­to­cre­dit 1. P. nagyi (David Jones) 2. P. alfredi (Haji Badarud­din) 3. P. nagyi (HS Johansen) 4. P. bin­tan ’mim­bon’ (Karen Koomans)

Details

Pub­lished: 27 Sep­tem­ber 2022

Parosphromenus spe­cial behav­iour. 1

Do all parosphromenus species stand on their head when flash­ing ? – some­one asked me the other day at a presentation.

No – they don’t.

It’s a pecu­liar thing, that most of the paro-​species we know do stand head down when flash­ing, yet we know of 3 species that do the oppo­site. When the males do their lit­tle dance in front of the female they stand head up.

These 3 species are ornat­i­cauda, parvu­lus from Bor­neo and suma­tranus from Sumatra.

Ornat­i­cauda and parvu­lus are nor­mally thought of as paro-​species that dif­fer from the oth­ers paro-​species, in not only this way, — but also in bodyshape, size and gen­eral demands.

Sci­en­tific work by Went­ian Shi, shown in this paper, also sug­gests that parvu­lus is a very old species, and in a dis­tinct evo­lu­tion branch from other species, which might explain the dif­fer­ence. (see https://​mapress​.com/​z​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​v​i​e​w​/​z​o​o​t​a​x​a​.​5​0​6​0​.​1​.​3​/​4​5​7​8​1 )

But suma­tranus is dif­fer­ent from that , — it reminds of most other species, — as far as we know — except for this one fea­ture with the head-​up flashing.

Why the evo­lu­tion hap­pened like this we don’t know, we can just accept that this is a curi­ous dif­fer­ence between some of the parosphromenus species.

Below pho­tos of the 3 species + one ‘ordi­nary’ head down flash­ing species for com­par­i­son, P. sp. bintan

Pho­tos 1. Parvu­lus (credit Helene Schoubye Johansen) 2. Suma­tranus (credit David Jones) 3. Ornat­i­cauda (credit Horst Linke) P. sp. bin­tan (credit H.S.Johansen)

Details

Pub­lished: 27 Sep­tem­ber 2022

P. linkei Kot­te­lat 1991

More details please visit our species page on the web­site https://​www​.parosphromenus​-project​.org/​e​n​/​p​-​l​i​n​k​e​i

Parosphromenus linkei inhab­its mainly the south­ern low­lands of Kali­man­tan Ten­gah, north of Suka­mara and south of Pudukali. Also occours near Pan­gal­abuun. Although wide dis­tri­b­u­tion the species is highly endan­gered, as the area where it could be found has no nat­ural veg­e­ta­tion any longer and is drained for agri­cul­tural purposes.

P. linkei is one of the most attrac­tive parosphromenus species, with its speck­led unpaired fins, long fil­a­ment of both male and females, and it is also one of the less shy and less demand­ing species of all, and often referred to as a good ‘begin­ner’ paro.

The cau­dal fin of the male is larger and has a sig­nif­i­cantly long fil­a­ment (up to nearly 1.5 cm), most sig­nif­i­cant in the males. Both male and female have spot­ted unpaired fins and on the side of the body, 0 – 3 (often 2) con­sec­u­tive thick black spots. Some males have sev­eral small red dots around these black spots. The body col­oration varies from light beige to bronze or even burgundy.

Breed­ing with parosphromenus linkei is rel­a­tively easy com­pared to other parosphromenus species, it is known to be robust and less sen­si­tive. Some­times very large bub­ble nest is built, a clutch can be large for big ani­mal (up to 100 eggs or more)

Source : Peter Finke

Pho­to­cre­dit 2+3 Orig­i­nal habi­tat of P. linkei, Suka­mara, photo Kishii

1 Male, 4 female, 5. nest, 6 fry, 7 male Photo Rafael Eggli

Details

Pub­lished: 18 August 2022

Parosphromenus palu­di­cola Tweedie 1952

More details please visit our species page on the web­site https://​www​.parosphromenus​-project​.org/​e​n​/​p​a​l​u​d​i​c​o​l​a

P. palu­di­cola was the sec­ond form after ‘deiss­neri’ recog­nised clearly as a dis­tinct species due to its struc­tural pecu­liar­i­ties. It was dis­cov­ered only around 1950 in Tereng­ganu by the cura­tor of the Raf­fles Museum, M.W.F. Tweedei and got its first descrip­tion in 1952.

The dis­tri­b­u­tion is very large extended in the north-​east of the Malaysian penin­sula (province Tereng­ganu), occur­ing even in south­ern Thai­land as the only licorice gourami species.

The almost total absence of light colours in this unusual species shows that its cen­tre of dis­tri­b­u­tion is not sit­u­ated in black water. Like other Parosphromenus some of their local vari­ants inhabit black water habi­tats as well, but oppo­site to almost all other Parosphromenus forms, they live in clear water, too (but mainly in tran­si­tional areas). They pre­fer lighter biotopes, com­pared to other species of the genus: their adapt­abil­ity to man-​made water bod­ies (road­side chan­nels, reser­voirs, pond-​like struc­tures) is much higher.

P. palu­di­cola is described as quite an unusual species of parosphromenus, as it has some char­ac­ter­is­tics which is dif­fer­ent from other species. This can par­tic­u­larly be observed in the fin struc­ture and in the lack of flu­o­res­cent col­ors in the unpaired fins (with few excep­tions). The body appear more elon­gated. (see https://​www​.parosphromenus​-project​.org/​e​n​/​p​a​l​u​d​i​c​o​l​a.)

Within the species, though, vari­a­tions occurs quite often in col­oration, with beige-​brown, bluish-​pink, or brown-​red or almost entirely red colour. Fur­ther­more fish of most pop­u­la­tions are elon­gated and thin, while oth­ers appear com­pact with higher backs. The ven­tral fins of all males have very long fil­a­ments. The cau­dal fins of some males are also oval or tri­an­gu­lar elon­gated with sev­eral fil­a­ments, while oth­ers are more rounded with just one mid­dle fil­a­ment ray

Usu­ally one of the least demand­ing licorice gouramis, because it is not nec­es­sar­ily depen­dent on the sim­u­la­tion of pure black water con­di­tions. The species is there­fore (together with P. fil­a­men­to­sus or P. linkei) par­tic­u­larly well suited for begin­ners in the licorice gourami aquar­ium hobby. The con­duc­tiv­ity of the water should be less than 100 micro Siemens /​cm, a value between 30 and 50 is con­sid­ered ideal. The pH value can range between 4.0 and 6.5, the height of the value is not cru­cial, but a low value can be use­ful for its antibi­otic effect. The addi­tion of humic sub­stances or humic acid-​emerging mate­r­ial is also help­ful. That the species is not found in pure black water, does not mean that humic sub­stances can be dis­pensed entirely.

P. palu­di­cola clutches may be among the largest in the genus (up to 100 eggs). A bub­ble nest is built, but often it remains rudimentary.

P. palu­di­cola is one of the species which the Parosphromenus Project has good suc­cess with, — it is being safely kept in good num­bers in our CCP programme.

Source Peter Finke, https://​www​.parosphromenus​-project​.org/​e​n​/​p​a​l​u​d​i​c​o​l​a

Pho­tos 1. Male and female (Went­ian Shi) 2 + 3 Palu­di­cola habi­tat (Mohd Illiam Norhakim Lok­man) 4. male (David Jones) 5 Palu­di­cola ‘Paka’ (Chris­t­ian Hinz)

Details

Pub­lished: 19 July 2022

Almost a year to the day after receiv­ing a gift of 6 young P. palu­di­cola from Chester Zoo our UK co-​ordinator Kevin Mar­shall is pleased to wel­come Chester Zoo’s man­ager Han­nah Thomas to his fish house to hand over fry back to the zoo in order to bol­ster their breed­ing program.

Details

Pub­lished: 03 May 2022

Yes­ter­day I vis­ited Malmø Akvariefören­ing, in Swe­den, to talk about parosphromenus species and the work of the Parosphromenus Project. An alto­gether pleas­ant evening with inter­ested lis­ten­ers, and also a fine day walk­ing around in spring­time Malmø cen­ter. Heres a few pic­tures — Helene

Details

Pub­lished: 12 April 2022

P. nagyi Schaller 1985

More details please visit our species page on the web­site https://​www​.parosphromenus​-project​.org/​e​n​/​p​-​n​a​g​y​i

P. nagyi from ranges of the east coast of West­ern Malaysia. The species has a rel­a­tively large area of dis­tri­b­u­tion; it is found from Pekan in the south going north via Kuan­tan and Cher­at­ing up to the area north of Cukai.

Although the species has a large dis­tri­b­u­tion area, most of the nat­ural habi­tats have been mas­sively altered by human activ­i­ties. Nowa­days the fish is found mainly in remain­ing resid­ual habi­tats and road­side canals that are still fed by rem­nants of for­mer black water swamps.

When the males show courtship colours, they can­not be con­fused with other species. In nor­mal colours males are still dis­tin­guish­able by their mor­pho­logic dif­fer­ences. The risk of con­fu­sion is higher for the females, because mor­pho­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences are less sig­nif­i­cant, but on close obser­va­tion they are still eas­ily iden­ti­fi­able. The pat­tern is com­pletely dif­fer­ent from other species: a hor­i­zon­tal two-​part coloura­tion, below black­ish, top dark to golden brown. Also the very short look­ing cau­dal, in which the fin rays exceed the fin area by about 1mm of and where the turquoise edge appears fur­ther for­ward, is char­ac­ter­is­tic of this species.

Unusu­ally short fil­a­ments of the ven­tral fins, which show a dark spot are also very typ­i­cal for both sexes.

Two habi­tat types are known in which the males are eas­ily dis­tin­guish­able by the eye-​catching band in the tail: in the form of terra typ­ica (Form “Kuan­tan”) this is white, and thus shows a dif­fer­ent colour as the blue rib­bons in dor­sal and anal. In the north­ern form “Cher­at­ing” the band is blue as well. In addi­tion the above-​described exten­sion of the tail fin rays is less clear in this form, and there­fore the cau­dal appears to be longer. “Kuan­tan” males also carry a sig­nif­i­cant dark spot in the rear part of the dor­sal fin. (photo 3)

The species is rarely seen in trade today; only the Kuantan-​form. The aquar­ium stock depends almost com­pletely on pri­vately imported fish. P. nagyi is one of the more eas­ier species to breed.

Pho­to­cre­dit 1. Mar­tin Hall­mann, 2. Helene Schoubye, 3. Vierke

Details

Pub­lished: 04 April 2022

AN OPPOR­TU­NITY TO MEET IN PER­SON — IGL MEET­ING 17 – 19 JUNI 2022

Our last inter­na­tional meet­ing in per­son was 2019 in Chester (UK). Due to the global pan­demic sit­u­a­tion, we were not able to arrange another meet­ing since that time. Today we still have issues with the risc of plan­ning and later can­celling a meeting.

How­ever, we feel the need to meet in per­son again and sensed a chance when the IGL invited us to join their meet­ing in Ver­den (DE). So if you are inter­ested, save the date June 17^th, 2022!

As the IGL is mainly a ger­man organ­i­sa­tion, most talks will be held in ger­man. But we asked the speaker to use eng­lish slides if they give the talk in ger­man. Apart from that, you will have the chance to meet and get to know us in the evening in an infor­mal Parosphromenus-​Project meeting.

More infor­ma­tion about place and time here

Details

Pub­lished: 23 March 2022

P. ornat­i­cauda Kot­te­lat 1991

In the future we will try to intro­duce a bit of each species to our audi­ences each month, so keep­ers can find answers to some com­mon ques­tions eas­ier. For more details please visit our species page on our web­site. https://​www​.parosphromenus​-project​.org/​e​n​/​p​-​o​r​n​a​t​i​c​a​u​d​a

P. ornat­i­cauda, from down­stream Kapuas, West Kali­man­tan. From Anjun­gan to Man­dor. Found in very typ­i­cal black peat water swamps. (pH 4.5, con­duc­tiv­ity 39 micro-​Siemens, tem­per­a­ture 27.6 degrees C, Linke) We con­firmed a even lower pH of 4.1 at 2017.

Ornat­i­cauda is one of the two smaller species (parvu­lus group), which is quite dif­fer­ent from other Parosphromenus species. They will not cross with other big species, and thus, can be found together with P. anjun­ga­nen­sis in the same habi­tat in the wild. In aquar­ium they are also peace­ful room­mates of other Paros (except parvulus).

Thus, in com­par­i­son to oth­ers big con­geners, ornat­i­cauda is a bit more sen­si­tive. The keep­ing and breed­ing attemps require more patient and con­trol of the water qual­ity, espe­cially clean­li­ness. The clutches are usu­ally small (10 to 20 eggs, rarely more) and they are often “rearranged” (from one cave to another) or “dis­ap­pear” com­pletely over night. The courtship dance of the male (see below) needs a lot of space, so small tanks (around 10l) are less suited then tanks with 20l or more. The con­duc­tiv­ity of the water should not be above 40 micro-​Siemens. The sen­si­tiv­ity of the eggs towards harm­ful bac­te­ria is high, so it is advis­able to have a low pH value (between 3 and 4) and a high con­tent of humic acids. How­ever, suc­cess­ful breed­ing has been recorded at pH 6.5 in clear water. Still, suc­cess­ful ornat­i­cauda breed­ing is regarded as the “high school” of licorice gourami hobby.

Although P. ornat­i­cauda appears today occa­sion­ally in high num­bers in the inter­na­tional trade, and although sig­nif­i­cantly more loca­tions are known com­pared to the time of its dis­cov­ery, it has to be accepted that the species is highly endan­gered. Part of the orig­i­nal habi­tat is already destroyed and has been trans­formed to palm oil plan­ta­tions. Many of the still exist­ing P.ornaticauda – biotopes have been badly dam­aged by con­t­a­m­i­na­tion with pes­ti­cides. Mainly these habi­tats are more or less affected rem­nants of swamps, still hold­ing black water, but these refuges are get­ting smaller and smaller. After all, this area is one of the most devel­opped area of this island. Human activ­i­ties are destroy­ing peat swamps and forests along the Kapuas river. Thus, it is now an IUCN CR species.

We hope more and more of them can be main­tained and dis­trib­uted within the aquar­ium com­mu­nity instead of col­lect­ing from wild.

Details

Pub­lished: 12 March 2022

Feed­ing Parosphromenus

.… means that you have to fig­ure out many dif­fer­ent ways of pro­vid­ing good live food as it is dif­fi­cult to get them to take any other kinds of foods. Hatch­ing brine shrimp is one of the foods which is often used, and we are often asked how to do this.

Depend­ing on which way you look at it, brine shrimp hatch­eries can be as sim­ple or as com­pli­cated as you like and there are many designs on the mar­ket. These home­made hatch­eries are used by our UK co-​ordinator Kevin Mar­shall who has made them from 1 litre juice bot­tles along with a push fit on/​off valve and a few odds and ends. While the over­all design is one that has been around for a num­ber of years the con­struc­tion method is sim­ple and cost effective.

I am cer­tain there are many other ways of doing this, you are wel­come to show us your way along with any tips and tricks that you have about brine shrimp in the com­ments below.

Kevin Mar­shall

Details

Pub­lished: 13 Feb­ru­ary 2022