Snakehead Tank Setup

[Maduro]

gorgeous tank enviornments!!

Hi,

please please do not follow the above given very BAD advive.
A bare bottomed tank with no hiding places is really not a good place for ANY fish !!!

Channa NEED hiding places to feel secure, the more the better. In a tank with lots of hiding places the fish knows that every time he wants he can hide, but normally ot only takes a few seconds in a secure place when it gets disturbed and swims out to check whats up outside the tank.

I have tanks were really more plants and wood is inside than water, and in these tanks I can the se channa CONSTANTLY !!
In tanks with only few hiding places, the fish stay more shy and tyke cover more often.

Here are a few examples for how a channa tank should look like.
home of Channa lucia:

Home of Channa stewartii (on the pic but now housed by C. sp. Assam)

Channa pulchra (have fry atm)

Another tank (C. sp. "glaser-harcourtbutleri")

and so on...

Cheers

 

[NitroK]

Agree....very nice tank indeed. What filtration are you using?

 

[Brucki]

HI,

I use internal matt filtration.
Easy to setup, cheap to buy (just a piece of matt and a powerhead), takes only less energy, and proviedes a huge volume of filtration capacitiy. if you buy a canister external filter the same volume you pay ten times the money

 

[Mikeyy]

Theres nothing wrong with bare bottom. What you do for your snakeheads is fantastic. But bare bottom works

 

[Brucki]

Ehats wrong with bare bottom ?

-Its not good for the fish (some chann alike to digg)
-Gravel or sand provides space for bacteria (Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter) to live on, so the ground is a natural filtration.
-bare bottom has always odd reflections that make the fish feel unsecure, and
-bare bottom really really looks ugly ! If I go in a fish shop to buy a fish for my meal, the live fish swim in such bare bottom tanks for a few days.
Thats nothing I want in my home.

 

[peterek]

Ehats wrong with bare bottom ?

-Its not good for the fish (some chann alike to digg)
-Gravel or sand provides space for bacteria (Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter) to live on, so the ground is a natural filtration.
-bare bottom has always odd reflections that make the fish feel unsecure, and
-bare bottom really really looks ugly ! If I go in a fish shop to buy a fish for my meal, the live fish swim in such bare bottom tanks for a few days.
Thats nothing I want in my home.

I agree with Brucki !!!
Tank without gravel or sand looks really ugly!

 

[gazelle]

ive seen decent tanks that had painted bottoms and such, i think plain bottom tanks are fine for some fish maybe not channa but certainly for other fish a painted or tile bottom would be ok

 

[macrostoma]

Hi,

please please do not follow the above given very BAD advive.
A bare bottomed tank with no hiding places is really not a good place for ANY fish !!!

Channa NEED hiding places to feel secure, the more the better. In a tank with lots of hiding places the fish knows that every time he wants he can hide, but normally ot only takes a few seconds in a secure place when it gets disturbed and swims out to check whats up outside the tank.

I have tanks were really more plants and wood is inside than water, and in these tanks I can the se channa CONSTANTLY !!
In tanks with only few hiding places, the fish stay more shy and tyke cover more often.

Cheers

Hi Brucki,

I strongly support your opinion. However, I may need your advice.

I use a 500 liters tank to keep a pair of C. aurantimaculata with plants in a substrate of mud. The tank was setup as a aquascaping tank with small characins before these auratimaculata was purchased. These fish are strong enough to disturb the substrate and dig out almost all the plants to the water surface. So I am going to re-setup the tank.

Do you have any suggestion on the substrate and the plant species to be used in the snakehead tank?
It looks like I have to use gravel as the substrate, and select the specices with strong sterm.
Apart from the surface plants, like Pistia, Do you bond all under water plant with the drift wood. I can see you use lots of Java fern and Anubia.


Thanks.
Richard

 

[Brucki]

Hi Richard,

yeah aurantis are said to be great diggers ;-)
In your case i would take lots of driftwood, floating cork bark tunnels and attach anubia and javafern. I stick th eplants in natural slots in the woood, or i take platic Cable binders so the plant is fixed until it has fixed itself to the wood.
If you want plants growing from the substrate, I would take fast growing Echinodorus species or Nymphea lotus, or giant Vallisneria.
You can put the plants in plastic buckets with lots of holes and put some heavy stone on them to prevent digging them, out. These buckets are often sold for pond plants, but a normal plastic pot drilled up with lots of holes should be ok too.
You can use sand or gravel, thats not really a difference, I suggest to use big slate plates, the fish like to dig under them and search cover in these caves.

 

[parkjehhyun]

Brucki, do the plants set up like that have any effect on water quality, or more specifically, your filtration?

I feel like all those plants make your tank look more like a swamp than a tropical tank jk, but does it mess with your filtration?