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Tanning Marulioides

Another way you can bloom the flower of your marulioides is with the tanning technique. First lets understand a little bit about the flower. The flower is actually a dead pixel, marulioides are very unique fish, they possessed the ability to change color at will like a chameleon. But when the flower is formed that scale is spoiled and no longer changes color, it cannot get darker or lighter.

As mentioned many times marulioides caught in river or big water always shows minimal flower, maru caught in dead water like peat swamp shows maximum flowers. Maru would need the color changing ability to survive, they can change color to hunt and to escape from predators.

Meanwhile maru living in black dead water swamp do not need the color changing ability as much or maybe the low PH somehow destroy the color changing ability and the result will be plentiful of flowers or plenty of spoiled scale.

I've done experiment on maru living in fast cycled tank and they lose the flowers or in another way to look at it they heal the scale so that the color changing ability is once again functioning. Maru living in slow cycle tank or still water tank with low PH will develop more flowers.

An alternate way to speed up this process is with tanning light, we destroy the color changing ability in the scale hence producing flowers.

First you will need the fish to reduce or park its color at neutral. Means color is off. Few ways to do this, the easy way is to increase the ph to above 7. The fish will be uncomfortable and will show no color. That is neutral color and this is the color we want.

Tan the fish with a low power light, submersible is preferred for better result. Full spectrum 10k light with uva and uvb. This will start destroying the thin layer at the edge. Do this for around 2 - 3 weeks, 7-10 hours daily and u can see the edge showing white.

Then switch to a strong lamp and burn the white color until it is fully destroyed and showing a bright white patch. The strong lamp can only be use for a short period. 7 days and 7-10 hours daily.

I've gone thru many failed attempts to tan marulioides until I finally figured out that the scale must be colored off.

The process will take months and close monitoring. Not an easy task, plenty of commitment.






4 months of tanning result





Hi output 12k T5


Low output 10k T5

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