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Showing posts with the label Iridophores

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...

Actinic light tanning experiment

A new project that I'm doing is tanning in a specific spectrum of light and that will be in the blue spectrum. Lets understand a little bit about light energy, they are from long wave length (Red) to the shortest (Blue). The long wave length has the least energy and the energy continue to increase as the wave length shorten. When it reaches the far end of the spectrum we will be in the ultraviolet range that can cause sunburn to our skin.  From my earlier experiment tanning in high kelvin light 10,000 - 12,000 produces result while using lower kelvin light does not get us anywhere. And we know now that the reason for this is because on the red and green spectrum they contain less energy, while high kelvin light contain more on the blue spectrum which produces more energy. I've bought an Actinic High output T5 meant for marine coral bulb and modified it to my high output tanning lamp. I will concentrate the tanning just on the blue spectrum that will peak in the range f...

Marulioides Care Part 2

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...