What Snakehead would you suggest?.
- Thread starter Armand
- Start date
tokyogasmask;3499606; said:My reccomendation is a Channa Aurantimaculata. Grows to a max of 16", occasionaly 18".
In my opinion, This snakehead is number 2 on the best looking snakeheads under Channa Barca.
I have a pair, male is at 10" and female at 11". Here are some pics:
Nice looking Auranti, is that a pic of the same specimen growing up? Correct me if I'm wrong but that's the male right? Where's the female? Are they in the same tank? Are you going to attempt to pair the 2 specimens up? If so please update us on how it turns out and how you managed to accomplish it without getting a group of them.
Hi Jungle.Jungle;3503318; said:
You may have just confirmed something for me.
I was 99% sure the SH pictured is a male. The female is a little bigger, and has a slightly rounder looking head (if that makes sense). They have paired up but are currently under seperation with the female having a melafix bath!
They were paired from a group of 4, and started doing the whole embrace thing and was real excited about the possibility of breeding. Then I made what I think was a real error.
The tank substrate was getting to the point of being toxic, so I did a big tank redecorate, and removed the substrate. All hell broke loose! The pictured SH went crazy and there was some very serious fighting going on. Lots of lip locking etc. The females fins came off pretty bad.
So, not sure what my next step will be. Any advice is always welcome.
Looks like a male to me, at least from the pics. It still looks kinda young though, but I may be wrong. It's kinda easier to tell when they're together because the females are usually chunkier, and the dorsal fin on the male seems higher and has a more prominent blue line, at least in my experience.
If you still have the others I would put them all back together again, and just remove the others once a pair forms, and at the least aggression will be spread out during the bonding process.
If you don't, I guess the best thing to do, if your purpose is to attempt to eventually breed them, is to put them back together in a neutral tank thats densely planted and do the observation, trial and error route.
Auranti's are aggressive to conspecifics by nature and most of the time after battling it out for a while will eventually chill out, with the battles becoming less frequent if it is a true pair. There's no real scientific documentation that I know of regarding this, so in the end most of us learn from our mistakes and base a hypothesis off of others experience, until there's some consistency. Unfortunately one of the few things that are fairly consistent about everyones experience with auranti's is that they are nasty to each other. Good luck and let us know how it works out for you.
If you still have the others I would put them all back together again, and just remove the others once a pair forms, and at the least aggression will be spread out during the bonding process.
If you don't, I guess the best thing to do, if your purpose is to attempt to eventually breed them, is to put them back together in a neutral tank thats densely planted and do the observation, trial and error route.
Auranti's are aggressive to conspecifics by nature and most of the time after battling it out for a while will eventually chill out, with the battles becoming less frequent if it is a true pair. There's no real scientific documentation that I know of regarding this, so in the end most of us learn from our mistakes and base a hypothesis off of others experience, until there's some consistency. Unfortunately one of the few things that are fairly consistent about everyones experience with auranti's is that they are nasty to each other. Good luck and let us know how it works out for you.
Jungle;3504822; said:
Thanks for the advice mate!
The 2 I own now have been together for quite a while, and the others were given away as these paired up. I am assuming they paired up as the exhibited the exact same behavior as my Bleheris did when they paired up (I got fry from those).
I am really gutted though that for the last few nights they were doing the wraping up like a ball thing at the top of the tank, and I rekon were about to do the business.
Then Stupid old me did a tank re-decorate and thats when they stopped and began fighting.
What do you think, put them back together and let them sort out their lovers tiff?
Cheers again Jungle.
Hi,
Along with channa aurantimaculata (golden spotted cobra snakehead) there is channa asiatica (chinese snakehead).
Asiatica will reach about 14" and is known to be aggressive, but can sometimes be one of the harder to care for snakehead species. I have been told by many that a good starter fish is channa sp. assam (assam blue/ blue blerehi) as they grow to smaller sizes (about 6"-7"), they are quite common and one of the cheaper snakeheads.
Good Luck.
Along with channa aurantimaculata (golden spotted cobra snakehead) there is channa asiatica (chinese snakehead).
Asiatica will reach about 14" and is known to be aggressive, but can sometimes be one of the harder to care for snakehead species. I have been told by many that a good starter fish is channa sp. assam (assam blue/ blue blerehi) as they grow to smaller sizes (about 6"-7"), they are quite common and one of the cheaper snakeheads.
Good Luck.
Channa lucius, or the Splendid Snakehead looks very similar to the African species and grows about 18".
