Dwarf snakeheads is term coined by aquarists

Fishkeeping

Fishkeeping is a popular hobby concerned with keeping fish in a home aquarium or garden pond. There is also a fishkeeping industry, as a branch of agriculture.-Types of fishkeeping systems:...

 to describe a group of snakehead fishes

Channa

Channa is a genus of the Channidae family of snakehead fishes. This genus contains about 29 species, but the most well known are probably northern snakehead and the giant snakehead . Channa has a wide natural distribution extending from Iran in the West, to China in the East, and parts of Siberia...

 growing only 10 inches (25 cm) maximum.

The following snakeheads belong to this group:

• Channa bleheri
  Channa bleheri
  The Rainbow snakehead, Channa bleheri, is a species of snakehead. Its type location is Dibrugarh, the most north-eastern area of Assam, India. It is known in Assamese as Sengeli....
  
  
• Channa burmanica
  Channa burmanica
  Channa burmanica is an endemic species of snakehead from Northern Burma. It is a very small species of snakehead that is included in the group of Dwarf snakeheads. Its colouring closely resembles that of Channa gachua and Channa bleheri. It is very rarely found in pet shops...
  
  
• Channa gachua
  Channa gachua
  Channa gachua is a species of snakehead. It is a species of dwarf snakehead and has a length of . It gave its name to the aquarists' term dwarf snakeheads to denote the smaller Channa species*Channa bleheri*Channa burmanica...
  
  
• Channa harcourtbutleri
  Channa harcourtbutleri
  Channa harcourtbutleri is a species of snakehead endemic to Inle Lake and surroundings in Myanmar. Locally called nga ohn-ma, among aquarists it is known as one of the "dwarf snakeheads", but no significant import for aquarists is known. It is one of the smallest species of snakehead and has a...
  
  
• Channa orientalis
  Channa orientalis
  Channa orientalis is a dwarf snakehead species. It is commonly called ceylon snakehead. They are freshwater fish that grow to a maximum size of 10 cm/4 inches. They originate from southwest of the island of Sri Lanka. They are predatory fish that feed on plankton, insects and sometimes small...
  
  
• Channa stewartii

In addition to those scientifically described snakeheads, several other undescribed snakeheads belong to this group. Those are (with trade names)

• Channa spec. 5-stripe
• Channa spec. lal-cheng, also known as blue bleheri and Channa spec. Assam
• Channa spec. true-blue, also known as Channa spec. galaxy-blue

Besides their commonality of being of small size, two other features characterize this group more specifically.

• zoogeographically those fish belong to the Indian ichthyofauna
• this group of fish are all but one mouthbrooder
  Mouthbrooder
  Mouthbrooding, also known as oral incubation and buccal incubation, is the care given by some groups of animals to their offspring by holding them in the mouth of the parent for extended periods of time. Although mouthbrooding is performed by a variety of different animals, most notably Darwin's...
  
  s. Channa bleheri
  Channa bleheri
  The Rainbow snakehead, Channa bleheri, is a species of snakehead. Its type location is Dibrugarh, the most north-eastern area of Assam, India. It is known in Assamese as Sengeli....
  
  is the only nestbrooding species of this group.

Further information

• For further taxonomic information see Channa on Wikispecies.

External links

• Comprehensive information on snakeheads at snakeheads.org