These fish were imported by Wet Spot in early 2024 and sold as ‘Parosphromenus gunawani blue-line licorice gourami’. I’ve gotten some feedback in a facebook group that this ID may be incorrect; the fish fit the description on Parosphromenus project pretty closely but don’t show the red coloration that’s mentioned there. They are, however, quite chonky for their genus, which would fit with P. gunawani.
I bought the last fish available from the shop, which turned out to be three males and one female. They were fairly outgoing and grew fat and happy but showed no signs of spawning until spring of 2025. As far as I know they weren’t triggered into spawning by warmer temps, although I did start feeding them more live food, including moina and lots of ostrocods which I seem unable to avoid culturing outside. Also: historically I’ve done limited water changes in black-water tanks in order to avoid raising the pH, but I’ve started steeping black water in a barrel and performing large low-pH water changes in some of the gourami tanks; it’s possible that this slight change in water quality encouraged spawning.
Spawning behavior was typical for other Paros that I’ve kept; the male guarded the floating eggs in the end of an angled, capped PVC tube and I removed the fry after they hatched but before they started to swim. Spawns were pretty big, dozens of eggs at a time. I now have around 50 of these fish in a couple of 5.5-gallon tanks; I’ve distributed a few to other gourami keepers.