FISHIOLOGY

If you are to substitute bigfoot to a fish species then the Giant Borneo Gourami is probably the perfect candidate of Bigfoot in the fish world. It is spotted and caught by fisherman all over the Borneo continent but yet, you cannot find a single living fish out there for sale. I've spread words to Sarawak, Brunei, Sabah and Kalimantan for the passed 3 years and I could not get a single living specimen. Osphronemus septemfasciatus - Giant Borneo Gourami, is a recent discovered species of the Osphronemus family by Tyson R. Roberts 1992. His data shows the extend of the species as below RANGE DESCRIPTION The species is known from Sarawak (central and north), Brunei Darussalam, Kalimantan Barat (Kapuas drainage), Kalimantan Timur (Mahakam drainage), and Kalimantan Utara (Kayan drainage) Borneo (Roberts 1992, Kottelat and Lim 1996, Parenti and Lim 2005). There are probably 2 var that I've noticed of the Osphronemus septemfasciatus species. Those from the Sarawak ...

Just to share with you guys something, a handy tool when you purchase your aquarium lighting. Download any lux meter from playstore or appstore to your phone. What you need to do is position your phone 12" or 24" facing your current lighting, measure the light intensity. Screenshot the result and you can go ahead to compare the light intensity with the new lighting at your LFS. Make sure to use the same distance and take note of the surrounding ambient lighting so as to not give you a false result. Plenty to choose from With this tool you can now estimate if the new light will be more powerful or less powerful according to the lux meter. I've tried a few apps and they are all similarly accurate in measuring the light intensity. It is a simple tool that make life much easier instead of judging your light from the wattage shown or with your eyes which is 99% inaccurate unless you are an old timer photographer. During my photographing days we do not have digital, we w...

A recent paper research by Tino Moritz and Ralf Britz - Revision of the extant Polypteridae . In the paper it was concluded by this 2 dude that the P. Lapradei and P.Bichir Bichir is no longer a valid subspecies or a species of its own. They're merged all into just P. Bichir. "Based on analysis of our data we synonymise P. lapradei and P. bichir katangae with P. bichir and only recognize a single species, however, with geographical variation in meristic counts. The cause of the sometimes striking differences in coloration remains unclear." This is a big blow for the fish hobbyist especially for those trophies collectors. And I guess it will be chaotic for new comers as anybody can sell PBL with 7 marking as PBBs. Apart from this it is actually a sad news, what have they done? Science is always about moving forward, but this 2 buggers just took everything backwards and lets breakdown the publish paper and see how they had derived to this mad conclusion. "Mater...

I've got another fish from my wish list and this time its the Anjumara, Hoplias Aimara. Rumored as the most ferocious fish in the world. And who doesn't want a piece of this action? I got the fish early July the size was around 10.5". It was of the Suriname variant, some patterned on the body. The fish readily took market prawn the next day and also frozen fish. The fish was most time parking in the corner 95% parking and 5% swimming. After a week it was quite boring and I spoke to kitty Lai who had his Aimara for a couple of months. He taught me the old trick and that is to comm it. Well comm Aimara? a risky move, but seem he had success with comming his with Giant Gourami. He had failed comm in his first few attempt, The trick is to comm with broad body fish. Initially I was looking for Black Oscar as tank mate to make it all South American but I couldnt find any around. And I chance upon a hybrid Giant Gourami the body also in my wish list, flat back long body alw...

Puteri 2 Puteri 4 Puteri Pertama  Puteri 3 Not much time taking care of these guys as I've been really busy at work, luckily not much of flowers is missing. Only Puteri 4 has increased flowering bcoz I've added CO2 into the tank.

This Channa Marulioides was caught near Chenderoh Lake Perak, if you take a closer look this is not our local Marulioides, this has all traces of kalimantan. Could this be the first crossing of kalimantan and local variant? I think it is.  Will be a nightmare in future to ID marulioides.