Licorice gourami breeding question

I happen to have 8 parosphromenus sp 'sentang' in a 5 gallon, 5 of which were born in my tank Anyhow, the boraras are fine as tank mates but will almost invariably hunt down any fry...Paroes breed sufficiently unpredictably (and are sufficiently imperiled in the wild, especially compared to the very popular boraras sp) that they really are best kept in a cover rich species tank where at least some of the fry can survive (I have yet to find any way to trigger spawning...they breed when they want to, making it hard to use breeding tanks unless they are virtually permanent).

A few other details you may find helpful; I am currently feeding them BBS and microworms three times a week, with weekly 2 gallon water changes with distilled water, a decaffeinated black tea bag (brewed beforehand for the tannins), and a very small amount of sodium bisulfate to reduce the PH (this tank has a PH in the mid to high 4's...note, though, that the fry were born before I started using the bisulfate and thus at a PH closer to 6, so you can probably skip that in most cases). One more note...in spite of their tropical origins, paroes are quite capable of taking temps into the mid 60's. Mine are regularly exposed to such temps and aren't phased at all. I got this idea from a certain Mike of Mike's mini fishes, who regularly breeds paroes himself.

Grah the great said:

I happen to have 8 parosphromenus sp 'sentang' in a 5 gallon....

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Thanks for the reply! Since this post I have done a LOT more reading in these guys....They have actually already spawned, as soon as I put in a few small PVC pipes, the male claimed one of them, and there were a ton of eggs stuck on the roof yesterday, as well as the female swimming around totally pale and with that very distinctive 'sexy eye' black bar. As of today however the eggs are gone, so I'm guessing water parameters are not acidic enough for the eggs to survive, and they probably fell down and were eaten. Am already half way through setting up the paros their own tank, complete with a ton of oak leaf litter, branches, java ferns/moss etc.

I already have microworm, grindal worm, and fruit fly (I use the grubs) cultures, and some BBS on the go! Do the adults still eat microworms?

The water parameters are the next biggest thing to tackle: Tap water here is pH 7, GH 2, KH 1, and water conductivity 45 μS/cm. Because it is already so soft, I'm not sure if distilled/RO water is necessary? Perhaps just oak leaf extract/alder cones etc will bring down the KH and pH enough?

Interesting that you keep them at such low temps! My fish room usually sits at at 65-70 so it's good to know that running the tank heaterless is an option

myrrhiam said:

Thanks for the reply! Since this post I have done a LOT more reading in these guys....They have actually already spawned, as soon as I put in a few small PVC pipes, the male claimed one of them, and there were a ton of eggs stuck on the roof yesterday, as well as the female swimming around totally pale and with that very distinctive 'sexy eye' black bar. As of today however the eggs are gone, so I'm guessing water parameters are not acidic enough for the eggs to survive, and they probably fell down and were eaten. Am already half way through setting up the paros their own tank, complete with a ton of oak leaf litter, branches, java ferns/moss etc.

I already have microworm, grindal worm, and fruit fly (I use the grubs) cultures, and some BBS on the go! Do the adults still eat microworms?

The water parameters are the next biggest thing to tackle: Tap water here is pH 7, GH 2, KH 1, and water conductivity 45 μS/cm. Because it is already so soft, I'm not sure if distilled/RO water is necessary? Perhaps just oak leaf extract/alder cones etc will bring down the KH and pH enough?

Interesting that you keep them at such low temps! My fish room usually sits at at 65-70 so it's good to know that running the tank heaterless is an option

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GH and especially KH need to be zero or very close for the eggs to survive. The PH really should be at least 6, if not lower (paroes can sometimes be found in water with a PH lower than 3 in their native environment!). Your conductivity is fine for now...there's some debate as to how low the conductivity needs to be for paroes, but something below 50 is almost always sufficient. I have occasionally observed adults eating microworms, but they do not do so with the same enthusiasm as brine shrimp (in contrast to most other small fishes I keep/have kept). I had grindal worms in the past, but these crashed and I haven't replaced them yet. Side note...a surprisingly large number of plants thrive in good paro conditions. In my experience, dwarf lilies, cabomba, duckweed, water lettuce, java moss, round pellia, and java ferns all do reasonably well for me under paro conditions (cabomba and water lettuce grow feverishly). The parosphromenus project would be a good place to go for more information.