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Kelakai treatment update

When I've first heard of the kelakai rumours, I thought it was strange and I did some research. Turns out I stumbled upon some rather interesting facts about this simple plant. It was food for the local people and traditionally it has medication or more like tonic properties. Kelakai is Stenochlaena palustris.

Many studies had been done and from these data there are something I found that it could all be possibly to the kelakai theory. The test of Red kelakai shows 20x more content of anthocyanins as to the green kelakai.

Anthocyanins is a natural colorant responsible for the red, purple and orange in plants. At low PH it will stabilized at the red hue. Of how do we administer this, well I've no idea. I tried gut load to ghost shrimp and they seem to have no interest of the fronds. For the time being I've soak the dried Red Kelakai to the water. From 2 of the experiment I did

at PH4 the fish glows with a maroon hue. The fish then was around 7" and too small to conclude the result as smaller fish naturally will not have strong colors.



Orangy highlights below lateral line


The 2nd test was done when the fish is 9" at PH4.5 for 1 month and the fish responded with orangy scales presents below lateral line.

Only red Kelakai is use for this experiment.


I cannot conclude the experiment as I lack the data of kalimantan Marulioides color trait. So far non responded to my question if Kalimantan Var do have orange scales.

I will continue with this test and see how far it effect the fish color. The next step I will need to gut load it to something and feed. With oral indirect administration perhaps the result will be more significant. Until then stay tune for more updates.

Meantime you can google - Stenochlaena palustris anthocyanins for further studies.

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