Grooming Marulioides

One of the reason I'm so fascinated with Channa Marulioides and has been my favorite fish for the passed 30 years is because every individual fish is different and the outcome of the fish is different. All the hard work you put in grooming the fish will be rewarded handsomely the moment your marulioides flare its full glory.

Keeping a marulioides alive and keeping a beautiful fish is a world apart. There is no right or wrong way to keep your marulioides. It just depends on which route you wishes to take. Usually I will take both. I keep marulioides in comm tank because I love watching my maruliodes interact in a comm tank. But fishes that I groom will be kept in single tank or mixed in with sparring fish or fishes.

Understand the nature of marulioides. Maru are found mostly in pristine water condition, hardly will you find maru thriving in lakes near town area. Even if they do survive they hardly will breed. This is one of the reason we don't find marulioides in city or town lakes despite many hobbyist gave up their maru and dump them in lakes nearby. Personally over the years I've dump more than 50 adult marulioides in Tasik Permaisuri and no they do not breed there.

On the other hand Channa Striata, Channa Micropeltes and Channa Lucius would breed and thrive in town lakes. This goes to show that maru demands excellent water quality. Contaminated water near cities will not be their choice. To groom a beautiful maru you will hence need to provide the fish pristine water condition. TDS must be low, the right PH and the right condition. Good food and good mood.

The color of maru is dictate by the PH and THE FLOWER BY THE GENE. Give the fish the wrong condition and you will see the flowers disappearing. That will be the basic of keeping marulioides.

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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

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