Hello fellow Channa keepers,
I have started holding fishes a few years ago (Piranhas, cichlids, channas, polys), and whenever I find a new kind of channa that can be kept in a tank that I have the room for, I end up with a new tank...
I can't help it, channas are probably the most amazing fishes ever seen, and seeing them dance in front of the window, have their belly grow after a good snack, chase eachother to, in the end, drop all aggressiveness once their playmate caught, just amazes me the more I see them.
I actually have a tank with bleheris (with my luck, I have no mated pairs out of the 6 I bought so it's still 6 of them dancing all day long), a 700L tank with cichlids, and a newly created (still lacking floating plants, but everything else is in there) tank with four asiaticas, hoping to create a pair before removing the other two. (Without mentioning the few baby tanks here and there, and believe me, my housemate isn't always happy about those tanks...
)
After acquiring these sub-juvenile Asiaticas, I realized nothing can beat channas, not even a wonderfully well setup Cichlid tank with enough colors to make you dizzy...
So I came to wonder, not that I'm particularily fond of doing a wholesale of my cichlids, and redoing my whole tank, if there was any specie/mix of species that would actually live in a 700L (about 185g if google is correct not that many americans actually get to hold channas
) without limiting the population to two of them.
I am not talking about a community tank, I am thinking of a channa exclusive tank, but with perhaps smaller species of channas, that actually get together, or a single specie, that actually allows for more than a paired couple...
Ideally, nothing as small as bleheris (not that there is any) but not quite monsters like Micropeltes either!
Any idea of a mix that would be compatible (and in all fairness, I would not consider any mix that wouldn't make all of them happy in the conditions it is put in) or of a kind that would live as a shoal/family without a risk of them eating eachother (And while risk zero doesn't exist in the hobby, pretty damn close to zero is what i'm after, losing one poly to choking on a smaller fish taught me to stay the f away from community tank mixing with monsters...)
if I am not clear, let me know, I tend to get excited about ideas, and gather informations the second I have them, so i'm all over the place!