tips needed for growing out young channa

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chrismaher1505

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jan 5, 2008
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essex, uk
hey guys not massively knowledgeable about snakeheads in general but at the moment my lfs store are selling young pleuropthalmaof which i originally bought 2. took them home put them in a small growout with two cichla ocellaris roughly the same size as them, about 1 inch. the tank is bare and the water params are perfect it is massively over filtered. lost 1 overnight and didnt know why it had no visible signs of injury. bought another 3 the following day as i thought the death was just one of those things. got them home and put them in the same tank with the other 1 and also put in loads of plant for them to hide in as i thought this may be why the original 1 died. they seemed fine. came in this morning to find them all dead. 3 with no signs of damage and 1 decapitated in half the bass are fine. what could this be. water is good air is good.

any ideas?

the only thing i can think of is either the bass are killing them which i doubt as at that size i doubt they could have torn one in half

or they are killing eachother but if tis was the case surely one would still be alive

they were feeding from literally an hour after being in the tank on b worm.


the only other thing i can think o is maybe the water is to warm as i have cranked it up for maximum growth.


any helpful suggestions on this very much appreciated also any tips on growing out young channa in geeral also wanted as i really want to get some more and try again but obviously dont want to be sending them to their death if i am infact doing something wrong

please help ANY ADVICE MUCH APPRECIATED

MANY THANKS
 
hi mate , firstly when you say cranked up temp ,what exactly is your temp at? , secondly you have chosen a hard species to grow out ,pleuros often die and are quite fragile at small sizes ,but as they grow become very hardy . they are very sensitive to water conditions , what is you ph , and temp as these are the main perameter to watch with pleuro , had you done a water change recently ? , and lastly although you would think the cichla have nothing to do with it ,there is agood chance there they did , they are very easly stressed at small sizes and could of been stressed by the cichla , also the cichla have huge mouths for there size and it is suprising what they will attempt to eat ,

although pleuro are one of the species the some people can seen to get away with mixing , you really should of started the pleuros of larger than the cichla. but for best chances grow them out on there own. a pleuro of around 7" is 1000 x more hardy than one at around 2-3"

cheers col
 
thanks for your help col, the temp is in the mid to high 80s and my ph is stable at about 7.0 and the last water change i had done on the tank was on wednesday of aout 50%
 
right mate , i would personally drop the temp down to around the 80-82 mark , much more than that pleuros aint going to be happy long term. as i said young pleuros are delicate little things , suprising but very true. also one thing pluros really suffer from at young ages is large water changes ,we do not know exactly why , but if i did a 50% water change on mine now , i would consider that there would be a very good chance a couple would die within a couple of days . we know they esp. dislike temp changes also, so if your change water is quite a bit cooler than the tank water then on a young pleuro than is near certain to upset them some way , and i would say most young pleuros are lost this way. even large pleuros that are quite hardy fish really struggle with a change in temp although no where near as much as a young pleuro.

obviously its hard to say just how much the cichla have played a part in it, it could be that they have eaten one after it died , one of the other pleuros may of eaten it and then died its self , maybe the best option would be to grow the cichla out 1st to 7-8 inches then try and locate a 7-8" pleuro , which will be a much hardier fish.

the best set-up for pleuros is without doubt a tank of there own ,if for no other reason than meeting there needs in contant perameters low ph, small and infrequent water changes ect . where as most fish such as the cichla will indeed do better with very large frequient water changes. this was one of the hardest things for me to get my head round after keeping african cichlids who done better on laod of changes. and is indeed why most of us keep low light ,low tech planted setups = few to no water changes

having said all that , pleuros are quite often sucsessfully mixed with others but obtaining a nedium to large specamin would give you far more chance

cheers col
 
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