Paros ID please

Hi Eddy

And welcome to this forum.

Very interesting fotos of the Ulu Tiram paro. It has a lot of resemblance to Parosphromenus nagyi, but there are differences too. My Cherating nagyi female is never this light colored in her breeding dress. This female looks a lot like your alfredi female.

To it looks like the outer black banding ind the dorsal and caudal of the male is reddish. My nagyi has no red at all.

This is a foto of my Cherating for comparision

greets Karsten

I will answer in english, hope everyone will understand.

First to Haji:
The Paro ist a shure P. nagyi. The female seems to be a nagyi too. (But first : Is the location shure, could a mistake be possible; did you catch yourself?)
It is more similar to the P. nagyi "Kuantan" we brought in 2000 from MK 316 (south of Kuantan). But not the same. The big surprise ist the location Ulu Tiram. It seems to be (if I found the right one) in the deep south near Kota Bharu (we supposed there tweedeei- oder alfredi types). So it would be a untypical and yet unknown location of P. nagyi. And a surprising one.

To Karsten:
The P. cf. nagyi "Cherating" we cought two times (2000 and 2004) at a very small location 50km in the north of Kuantan. I think you have young of our imports. They are a lot of small differences to P. nagyi "Kuantan".

Best wishes

Martin Hallmann

Hi Martin,

The paros was caught by a few friends of mine.We traded/swapped fishes regularly.And Yes the location is confirmed at Ulu Tiram which is in Johor.

Hi Karsten,

There is a slight tinge of reds at the black banding area ........ Maybe i will try to get some more photos especially during the spawn.Perhaps that will help.

Thanks.

Eddie, we all are keen to see later further photos of these animals because the locality is quite unusual, indeed.

I have been trying day and night trying to capture a good flare from this guy ...... but he has always given me the slip

Today managed to grab my camera and photographed him during feeding.

Ediie, as Martin Hallmann wrote in his above mail this is a Parosphromenus nagyi (male) of the type from the location of Kuantan. Definitely. The riddle is the different location at which this fish has obviously been caught:
1. Does nagyi occur there naturally?
2. Has somebody abandoned his fish from the location of Kuantan here?

It puzzled us too ...... how the nagyi end up further South.Can't answer you but i think the nagyi has been there naturally.And i can't think of any reason why someone should abandon the nagyi in the new location.Is it possible that the distribution of the nagyi is more widespread???

Eddie, it is almost certain that the distribution of many Parosphromenus-species is (or at least formerly was) more widerspread than we know today. But there are two riddles in this case nevertheless:
1. The distance between the known locations around Kuantan and the new location of your fish is impressively long. Why has a nagyi never been found at an intermediate place until now?
2. We know of very few occurrences of two Parosphromenus-species at the same place. In all these cases, the two species are remarkably different (anjunganensis and ornaticauda, for instance). In this case, relatives of the bintan- (or harveyi-) species-group live rather near indeed (I do not know whether they live in the same streams or ditches). This would be puzzling, too.
It must be investigated further!

I have got this one a few months now.I have tried several times to take some pics of this male but he is always avoiding me.This is the best so far.Not really coloring up yet ....... maybe i need to move him to another darker setting.

I got this from the Sematan area.

I got 2 males and 3 females initially ...... but this male killed his rival.

It is a harveyi- (or bintan-) type fish. We are keen to see the male in brighter colours some day.
Could you give us some more details where the Sematan-area is located? Did you catch the fish yourself?

Yes i caught the fish myself in Sematan area,which is about 80km from Kuching.Sematan is near to Lundu,western side of Kuching.I noticed that you can see the stripe almost similar to the paros allani ... on its chin/lower mouth area.

I ll try to post the fish in its breeding color the next time.

Thanks.