FISHIOLOGY

Over exposure to strong light you'll notice yr maru turned colorless. Best is low light and you'll see the band forming strong all the time. Too dark eg black sand black side n back will make the fish dark colorless n no band showing. Ive tried this with 18w T5, 36W high output, led low n high same result. I've tried tanning wit nan light... Fish turns black. Tanning with fullspectrum high out put also produce black fish. I notice unlike most fish maru respond differently with light. When u off the light for many hours, the moment u on yr light u see the fish in full color. Most fish is dull in the dark but maru shows thier best in dark environment. Banding will be strong. U can play around, just keep in mind yr target is the fish should always show its band strongly. And the most important of all fish keeping is low NO3. How do we not do water change and yet maintain a low NO3? Answer is Plants, low light plants like java is good, or u can plant terrestrial plants

There seem to be a lot of confusion in these terms lately and everything is everything. People are naming for example sp terengannu sp sampit, sp sentarum and lately I even seen people naming ori or not ori. Lets clear the air sp - sp means an unidentified species yet to be proven, Borneo is where the fish is found hence sp Borneo. sp lets think of it as (Species Problem), sp will refer to the spp of a certain species but undetermined, for example Channa sp. Borneo from the channa spp. So sp means the fish is suspect to be a different species but unproven. It looks like a channa marulioides but the pattern, shape, characters, fin count, scale count or something is very different. We shall wait for scientific evidence to prove if it is indeed a different species. So in the mean time we name it Channa sp.Borneo. sp Borneo refers to a channa that is typically red in color and stout body. var - var means the same species but from a certain location, something identifiable.

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

As per my request to my collector for more samples of Terengganu Marulioides I'm glad he took the task seriously and after our expedition he had ventured into more areas to get more samples of the Terengganu Marulioides. As shown previously of the river marulioides collected 50km south of the variant Terengganu habitat Last weekend he went the other way 100km southeast of the variant Terengganu habitat and returned with the below samples. Now these really blurs the line of the variant Terengganu. As from the above image, the scale flowers has some adjoining type on the black spotting, the finnage is typical Var. Terengganu, but they have lesser band. At the variant Terengganu site I have not seen a single piece with 4 bands, the lease of them are 5 wide bands. Where else the river type has shorter and lesser bands but still clearly chevron pattern bands. Typical of river marulioides or open water marulioides they have less flower naturally. Lets hope

PH reading of the Black waters of the Marulioides Trengganu Variant swamp I came across a post discussing this topic today, or rather a group of hobbyist bragging that PH is not important when keeping Marulioides. So lets discuss on this matter shall we. Keeping your fish alive and keeping your fish to its optimum level is 2 different thing entirely. A true fish lover will research the species they intend to keep and respect the fundamental rules that nature had designed and its intention. The responsibility of an aquarist is to inherent the rules that was set on. A task he takes seriously before even deciding to placed the fish under his care.  Marulioides thrived on tropical swamp wetland. And tropical swamp waters are known as Blackwaters. Blackwaters are low in PH, low in dissolved oxygen, high in carbon dioxide. These are the characters of Blackwater.  Although there isn't any international fish police that had created any laws that says marulioides cannot be kept in PH7 or ev

I did a thinking the other day and something struck my mind of the Marulioides habitat. Flower performing specimen most time thrive in still water, low Ph and blackwater. When I had failed specimen they are most time related to fast moving water, powerful pump, air pump, high PH, these if you look at it in another angle are somehow related to the ratio of oxygen vs carbon dioxide. Is Carbon Dioxide one of the factor for flowering of the marulioides?  Or is starving of oxygen the caused for producing flowers. Remember open water and Marulioides from rivers has less flowers? How are the lack of oxygen causing a flower bloom? So the only way we can find out is to do a set up to test out this theory. I've practically ran out of tank to do so many types of experiment, thank god I still have 14pcs of Terengganu to try out. I choose the many band var which is the most stubborn of all types. From my understanding this is the controversial spec that is causing all the fights. The many b

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

Channa Melanoptera is a super rare snakeheads from Indonesia. First describe by bleeker in 1855. He found the fish in Kapuas river. Bleeker gave the description of a black snakehead with no ocel at the tail.  They look somewhat like C. Marulioides. A lot of confusion and misinformations about the description of this fish from the internet. Most of them posted a blackout C. Marulioides and took it as C. Melanoptera. Again no thanks to fish traders quick to make a fast buck. Channa Melanoptera practically has no flowers or white scales. If the white scale do exist it will be very small looking inbetween C. Marulia and C. marulioides white spotting. The batik pattern on the finnage glows in blue they've a florescent feel to it. They do not have the ocel at the caudal fin . Bands are not presents below lateral line . The heads are very short and slim. They have top black and bottom white. Ive searched this species for a very long time until I stumble on a kalimantan shipment r

Most time when a hobbyist hears the name Terengganu toman bunga they glow with expectations, cant blame them seeing so many snakeskin and Sticking flower specimen posted online and fishing magazines. But will buying a baby Terengganu and raising them from young gives you the snakeskin dream fish? The answer usually is an unfortunate NO. So far I've yet to see a baby  Terengganu growing to a full snakeskin. I've only seen sub adult wild caught peat swap fish that grew to a snakeskin. For the true sticking flowers variant, I've yet seen one grew from tank. Sub adult fish had a good start in the peat swamp that already open up most of its flowers and just waiting to blossom. Terengganu var caught in peat swamp usually has more flowers where else those caught in rivers and big lakes will be a disappointment in the flower department. Do not put on high hopes that your baby Terengganu will grow up to be a champion. 99% of the time they grow up just the same as those RM10 comm

- What I've learned from the Terengganu expedition was indeed invaluable towards my research and understanding of the Marulioides. -The first I would like to share is the term called One Dragon literally translated from chinese 一条龙. When my collector kept calling out the one dragon I wasn't sure what it was and thought it was  the snakeskin until I paid closer attention and indeed i could see the formation of the chinese dragon as below So we now know that we have the stick flowers, the snakeskin and now the one dragon. 一条龙 - The next subject will be the the low oxygen environment which unfortunately I forgot to get the O2 tester. Not much to conclude but based on the video below you can clearly see that there are some movement or flow in the water, sort of like an under current but the surface is dead still as if there is an invisible borders separating the 2 layers. Watch until the end and you can see leaves and debris will remain stagnant on the surface. T

Some Channa Marulioides var in Malaysia do comes in Orange color. The famous orange variant is from Terengganu of course but other states has their orange variant as well.  One of the place that I've had the opportunity to explore is the sg. Dusun variant. They are found in the tributary along this river. I was there during 1991 - 1996. We had caught a number of orange and very bright yellow variant adult fish. The fingerlings of the dusun variant cannot be ID so don't waste your time chasing for this variant. Unless your source are incredibly reliable which is rare nowadays. The fingerling shows a strong golden hue when they're around 3". Then they change to a dull deep yellow/orange when around 6". Their finnage starts losing the batik and will eventually turned black. The adult fish display an impressive of color play from cream to yellow to orange according to thier mood. Recently I saw an orange marulioides being posted at facebook and I was