Terengganu water sampling and new collection

The water of Terengganu peat swamp is amazingly soft, the measurement was taken in the monsoon season where the water is generally high. In the dry season the PH should be much lower and the water much darker in tannin.

TDS at 36ppm, in case you wanna know, Kuala Lumpur tap water is between TDS 50ppm - 70ppm. You will need to run an RO unit to achieve the natural TDS.

Electric Conductivity is at 74us/cm, EC determines the inorganic dissolved solids examples: NO3, Fe, mg and so on. The reading for natural swamp should be in this range unless there are farming or industrial activity in the surrounding area. Tap water ec is around 60 - 90us/cm.

PH is on the high side for black/peat swamp, most probably due to monsoon. Next year dry season will do another round of test to determine the average PH.

Some of the Marulioides that did not survive, take note that not all Terengganu's are 9 or 11 bands.

Captured fries

Different batch

Another new batch

This piece has the gene of the true plum flowers Marulioides. Bad news is the mother did not survive and perished after 3 days. The good news is I've got the baby fries at home.

Very young fries feeding on cyclops, 70% perished in a weeks time. So far only 14 tails survived and they've grown larger.

This is the plum flower gene babies, hopefully they carry the gene well.

I've ran out of place to keep my marulioides and temporary housed them in a dustbin until my new tank arrives.

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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

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

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

FISHIOLOGY

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