Skip to main content

Channa Marulioides Var Terengganu revisit

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 commercial breed Toman Bunga bought from the lfs. Choosing a baby Terengganu is the same as choosing a cb Maru. Choose the piece that already shows hint of flowers. Do not be fooled into thinking that 10 bands Terengganu will give you higher chances of getting a snakeskin. You will be most disappointed if you think this is the case. Snakeskin fish has nothing to do with bands.

Terengganu maru comes from 2 sides (both look identical) 1 lives in open waters has less flowers and those from peat swamp is your treasure. Can you grow a top flower specimen from a big open water baby? I can't answer you this as I've yet tried one. But I've seen countless pictures of adult Terengganu Marulioides caught in open water that shows very little flowers and I think this is good enough to answer your curiosity.

How can you tell if my baby ganu maru is from peat swamp or open water? Unfortunately you cant.

Why is baby ganu so expensive? If they are from the swamp, then it is very difficult to access, takes almost half a day to reach them, you will need a 4x4, you will need a boat, and you will need some local aboriginal people to catch them at night. And yes you will need to be in the middle of the jungle. And then you must have the skill to transfer and convert the low PH fish back to tap water. They will most time incurred losses and add that into the cost of your fish.

Is buying AAA fish at 50 - 100x the cb maru price justifiable? Depends on by what means the seller grade his fish. If blindly grade by band then absolutely NO. If grade on flowers then you must at least see a straight row of flowers already started forming.

What is the standard of grading Terengganu Maru? Unfortunately there are no standard procedures to grade a Terengganu maru or any maru. You will need to pass this question to your seller and ask him to explained in details. IMHO it is impossible to grade a marulioides.

What is the hype about Terengannu var Marulioides? The Terengganu var if properly groom shows beautiful batik patterns on the last 3 finnage, the color of the ganu maru is yellow to orange and if you're damn lucky you may get a snakeskin or a real sticking flower maru.

Why are they so many discrepancies and arguments whenever it comes to baby ganu maru?
Because the seller over promised the buyer, maybe to justify the high price. As a buyer you are also responsible to understand what you're buying. Do some research and not just listening blindly to what the seller tells you.

99.9% of arguments is why my prized grown up ganu no flower? This is where the seller is caught red handed for over promising. Remember even if the parent fish shows full snakeskin but this doesnt mean the babies all will grow up to be snakeskin or plenty of flowers.

Channa Marulioides be it from Terengannu, Kahang, kalimantan or anywhere for that matter, is a fish that takes skill and luck to groom. Do it wrongly and you'll spoil the fish. Keeping them alive and keeping them to be a champ is a world apart.

Comments

  1. do you think digging a pond and creating a blackwater habitat would achieve the same picture perfect ganu maru?

    ReplyDelete

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

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

Malaysia Golden Arowana Challenge

This project was back in 2014, Kitty Lai wanted to know if I still have it to groom Arowana fish. So I picked a so so XB which I bid only for RM400. Its not a fish which you will find appetizing, the fish has slight PLJ, crossed barbel, very thin/translucent gold.  unformed pearlies  Very transluscent gold  crossed barbel Pictures above are what the seller sent me  Fished Arrived First Day fish in my tank First fixed was having the barbel cut and take note of the slight PLJ PLJ - Protruding Lower Jaw 2 weeks later in the dark tank, gold become more intense and I needed to pump the fish up to reduce the PLJ effect. Tanning project begins and when I went to find for tanning lights only did I realized how long it had been since I left the Arowana scene. TFC factory had closed down, for your information TFC T8 light is one of the best tanning light for arowana. I asked all the shop and they say everyone is using LED tanning light. Forget about