Skip to main content

Understanding Indonesian Marulioides Variant

I would like to introduce you to some of the beautiful Channa Marulioides from Indonesia and at the same time clarify the complexity and the confusion as best I can.

what is Marsum, Marbor, kalimantan, borneo, sp borneo,

No.1 
Marsum - Marulioides Sumatera


Blue Marulioides not to be confuse with Channa Melanoptera

Channa Marulioides Sumatera variant is very similar to the Malaysian variant. There is also another var found there known as Blue Maru which is greyish blue in color.

No.2
Marbor - Marulioides Borneo known in Indonesia or Marulioides Kalimantan or Kali by Malaysian and Singaporean.



The double line


The 999/eee


The yy + double line

Now Kalimantan is very complex and has many variant. They comes in the 2 line bands form, the 999/eee form, the YY + double line form. But one of the key factors to tell them apart from sumatera, malaysia and thai variant is the middle exposure. 


The key to ID kalimantan is the expose in the middle of the band which is not found in Malaysian, sumatera and Thai variant.

No.3
Chann sp Borneo - Red Maru


Channa sp Borneo is found in Kalimantan and is believe to be an sp instead of a variant. Meaning we believe sp borneo is valid as a new unnamed species from the channidae family. 

Meantime that is all the information I can give you unless I've new discovery and will update again on new confirm variant found. I will not mentioned the location of the species found as most time the information's are unconfirmed and may lead to further confusion, so I'll leave the location aside.

I hope this will clear the air on Indonesia marulioides and please be reminded that many traders like to name their fish as sp this and sp that. sp is not the locality name, variant is the locality name. Meantime there is only 1 sp from the channa species in Indonesia and that is the Red Maru or Channa sp Borneo. 

This article only serves as a guideline and not the absolute to ID variant. As in all living things there will be oddballs and there will be crosses that somehow happened by chance or by human migrations. There are also farms that possibly crossed a malaysian n sumatra or a sumatra and kalimantan. We've to take into account all this possibilities.







Labels:

Comments

  1. ChongMay 28, 2021 at 5:27 PM

    Hi, may I know what minimum tank size require for a channa maruliodes red sampit to growth till its max length without the need to upgrade bigger tank. A solo red sampit in a 6x2x2 tank is it OK?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bun InvasionJanuary 29, 2022 at 11:44 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bun InvasionJanuary 29, 2022 at 11:46 PM

    Hi Moorish, Thank you for the info! I wanna ask, as i have a Red Sentarum as labled in the shop i got him from, So its safe to assume its either a Marulioides Borneo or a sp Borneo right?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. MoorishFebruary 6, 2022 at 6:06 PM

      I cant be sure as shops tend to be rather aggressive when labeling fish with names

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The science behind Channa Marulioides colors and pattern

Channa Marulioides is the chameleon of the fish, they are the champion when comes to color changing abilities. In a split second they can change from greenish brown to yellow and to orange. They can change their eye color from black to bright red. Observe your Channa Marulioides and you can see they greet you with bright yellow colors doing the maru dance, they flashes their bands to the highest contrast. The body colors are intense and their eyes bright vampire red in colors. When they are tone down and just swim about their business you notice the color is dull when they are in mid water, and suddenly sinking to the bottom with bright orange (depending on the var and PH) they keep changing and flashing their bands and patterns. But the black and white flowers will remain so in whichever mood they display. Also take note that maru shows their best colors mostly at midnight. Each Channa Marulioides comes in its own unique pattern of bands and flowers, like a fingerprint, I beli
Post a Comment
Read more

Tanning Marulioides

Another way you can bloom the flower of your marulioides is with the tanning technique. First lets understand a little bit about the flower. The flower is actually a dead pixel, marulioides are very unique fish, they possessed the ability to change color at will like a chameleon. But when the flower is formed that scale is spoiled and no longer changes color, it cannot get darker or lighter. As mentioned many times marulioides caught in river or big water always shows minimal flower, maru caught in dead water like peat swamp shows maximum flowers. Maru would need the color changing ability to survive, they can change color to hunt and to escape from predators. Meanwhile maru living in black dead water swamp do not need the color changing ability as much or maybe the low PH somehow destroy the color changing ability and the result will be plentiful of flowers or plenty of spoiled scale. I've done experiment on maru living in fast cycled tank and they lose the flowers or in ano
16 comments
Read more

Marulioides Care Part 1 (Bunga)

I've been reluctant to write this but many had asked me to post how to take care of marulioides for maximum performance. The truth is you need to abused it, hence Marulioides care isn't exactly the correct terms to use. Channa Marulioides is found in most part of malaysia, lakes, pond, streams, rivers, but one thing most fisherman realized are those caught in swamp, I mean really dead stagnant peat swamp. Waters that are near black in color most time the fish had tremendous performance, beautiful colors and a lot of flowers. From this theory many tried replicating the conditions with low ph and so on. I've experiment many ways of keeping marulioides and I can concur to this, Low PH meaning Ph5 and below, I usually keeps mine ard PH4 or maybe lower, because my test kit can only measure till 4 and cant read anything lower. Low PH produce beautiful coloration. As for the bunga, yes everybody wants to know this, there is no tricks, just lots and lots of experiment. It i
5 comments
Read more