Channa Gachua

[Amerce]

Well if you can't beat them then join them or so my oh says, whilst he will feed them and love them he won't clean the tank or anything else LOL, his excuse is that I know far more and he might do something wrong and kill his pride and joys.

So here they are his baby channa's

We did start with 4 of them but don't ask me how but one escaped the tank and I still can't find his poor little body, so now we have 3 and the first pic is of the dominant one (no fragged fins), the only other occupant of this tank are 3 Aequidens sp Peru that I got in a fish auction.

 

[england]

yaaaaay channa
they're looking very healthy, saw one today at fish shop but was 1inch,had nowhere to put it, shame....
Best thing you can do very minimul maintainence

 

[kniesh]

Nice, another victim to the snakeheads. Just got back from a place selling sp. fire and ice, I was tempted but nowhere to put them for now

 

[Amerce]

Yup they are in a 3.5 footer and I just do a partial change every 2 weeks or so, they have an external filter and then a gravel filter I created, otherwise it is bare bottomed.

The Aequidens seem to ignore them and vice a versa, I was warned not to put anything else in there but as these were so small (bout 7") I thought I'd get them used to other inhabitants and make sure everyone had a hiding area and it seems to have worked.

 

[shelaghfishface]

beautiful.. i could have put money on nelly being first to drool

 

[england]

beautiful.. i could have put money on nelly being first to drool

 

[simonas]

nice very similar to my orientalis although they have coloured up a fair bit now, yours pronbably will too. The only difference is one has pelvic fins and the other doesn;ty except I can't remember what way round

 

[Amerce]

Orientalis lack the pelvic fins.

 

[Amerce]

Well my OH is a Channa daddy, was just doing a water change as they were due, and just about to suck up all what I thought were peat or poo droppings and spotted them moving !!!

Frightenend me to death, I managed to snag some out just in case I had upset the female and they are in a separate tank now but there are still quite a few youngsters with the adults. I had been wondering where my 3rd Channa was as I'd not been seeing much of it recently.

 

[Amerce]

How they do grow and seem to multiply

 

[england]

How did i miss this, looks great, weldone and congratulation's.....how many do you guestimate?
what are you feeding them on? whats you waterchange routine like?

 

[always4lora]

Congrats, i've got 7 orientalis but yet to have any luck getting a pair. Lovely looking fish

 

[karigupi]

aww look at the little wrigglers, congratulations! How many do you think there are? I cant wait to watch these grow, they will be such cute babies.

 

[Amerce]

Hi Nelly, surprised you hadn't commented before now actually LOL

The "male" in question went missing for approx a week, got worried and was about to do a water change investigation as I thought I'd lost him but then he turned up for a meal looking a bit lean and since then I've been digging garden worms up and buying fishing maggots to bulk him out, but the female has been getting to the food faster than him, so had to arrange distribution of food at one end of the tank and then quickly to the other to let him get some grub.

Anyway they have taken over the right hand side of the tank and no one, mean no one goes there, the cichlids have the left side along with the other Gachua, so I added extra silk plants for them to hide in and the rascals have also dug up the glass beads etc in a pot plant at some stage for the fry and it is a mess, but I have only done 1 water change since I saw them last week, will be doing another tomorrow as I'm feeding the tank inhabitants more frequently.

The youngsters are getting brineshrimp, and grindal worms 3 times a day in rotation and for the smaller ones that I snagged and have now returned they are getting microworm. Read up that the females expel un fertilized eggs for the fry for about a month after they are released (these eggs sink so that they young can bulk up quickly), I can confirm that this happens cause the fry I took out are a lot smaller than the fry in the tank, even though they had lots of water changes and extra feeding. If you expand the photo you will see some of the fry are slightly smaller and don't seem to have quite as big a tum, these are the fry I snagged and put back into the tank with the others as they didn't seem to thrive as well as the main tank inhabitants.

Got around 50+ or so but it is hard to check cause they are hiding in the silk plants and dad keeps guard in the corner and mum guards the centre of the tank to stop anyone getting into the corner of the tank.

 

[Amerce]

Update on the brood with pics

I ended up removing the other fish from the tank temporarily as the fry were being allowed more free reign in the tank and the parents were wearing themselves down to the fin keeping other fish away from the babies.

So at the moment they have a 3.5 foot tank to themselves.

Excuse the bits in the tank, they are brineshrimp just fed them and adults got some lovely juicy worms from the garden, lovingly collected and washed by my husband LOL.

PS : think 50+ might be a bit on the low side, probably quite a few more.