Channa Striata won´t grow anymore

[Ditech]

Hello everybody,

I caught my Striatas last year in September when they were still gold and with their parents at a lenght of 0,5 inch.
Now nearly a year (10 months) is passed and my two striatas grow to 3 and 4 inch.
At first is fed them with artemia and mosqito larvae, later with maggots.
Now they got earthworm and sometimes shrimps.
I think they need "fish" to grow but they don´t want to eat it.
If I put dead pieces of (Fresh!) freshwater fish in the tank they just smell and thats it.
Earthworms will be eaten immediatly.

Could it possible that they grow so slow because of the diet?
Should I still feed them with Earthworms?

Thanks for help!

 

[Reiner]

that seems very slow for a fish that can grow to over 2 feet. My brothers pleuro grew to almost 12" in the first year and they max out around 15". He feeds raw shrimp from the market as a treat and pellet food on the regular. After the fish grew to 12" the feeding schedule went down to twice a week.

BTW what size tank is it and how often do you feed?

 

[kno4te]

Madou
D -DC-

 

[Mazhar26]

That's very slow grow , u must feed them daily and its really don't matter that u feed them fish or shrimp ( my diplos grow very well by eating shrimp) but sometime give them wild caught local live fish , I give loaches to diplos , tank size?

 

[Mazhar26]

Feed shrimp and live fish ( wild caught ),stop giving them earthworms, might help

 

[Madou]

Most channas' diet is mostly insects that fall into the water.
We all realize that when we feed them, they don't hunt, they gulp whatever hits the water before even checking what it is sometimes.

I think your channas could grow perfectly fine on a diet based on solely insects/worms. Meal worms do wonders, so do morios. Earthworms are not ideal, they give little proteins, so they shouldn't be used as staple, but they're not harmful in any way that I know.

So there are only few possible causes. Tank size, water parameters (though they don't really affect channas as much as other fishes), and most importantly, temperature. If you followed the yearly cycle of temperatures, it means that in most of the time you've had them, they were in colder temperature, which will slow down their metabolism, and make them grow slower than during summer. I'd let this summer pass and see how fast they grew, since you're going to want to feed them more often in the next 4 months, raise the water temps, and all those factors should most definitely help the growth.

 

[Ditech]

Thank you all guys for your answers!
I try to starve them a little bit and give them only dead fish from now on.
We have a local pond dried out, so I had a lot of dead nothern pike which i cut in pieces for food.
Additional I have a further Nothern Pike inside the tank now, it was the same size and eats loads of food.
It just takes everything that falls into the water, while the snakeys still lay on the ground.
I thought they will start eating when they see the Pike eating all of their food.

Hope they start eating the dead fish soon.

Btw. Tank size is 160 litres which should be okay for these small fishies.
There are videos on youtube with channa striata that have nearly the size of their own tank.

 

[Reiner]

This is just a bit over 40 gallons which is pretty small actually and might be part of the reason why you have slow growth. Bigger is always better and eventually a fully grown striata should have a tank somewhere in the neighborhood of 800 liters minimum or more.

 

[Madou]

Ok, this is something you hadn't mentioned. Tankmates. Or worse yet, intimidating tankmates.

Your sneakheads won't compete for food with a fish they can't kill. In fact, they'll eat less and sometimes let themselves die of starvation.

Remove anything that isn't a striata.

 

[Ditech]

The pike is inside since 4 days or something.
But I have to say that the snakeheads are much more active and less shy since i gave them dead fish only. They not eating it when throwing it in, but later.
It also seems that they dont care about the pike, I want to release him back but it would make a lot of trouble for the channas to catch him
Anyway he is smaller and not intimidating I guess.