Stocking
Amazon River Sickness, to say so ...
Written by Monday, 26 November 2001 01:00
No way! Sorry folks!! This time I will not talk to you about Malawi cichlids!!! The fact is I’m back (actually on 6th of August, 2000) from my trip to Perù. I feel the need to heal, in some way, my Amazon River “sickness”. I’m not sure it actually exist but … To do so I’ll add a review on how my (former?) silver Arowana is doing. After all it is not that bad to have a look elsewhere every now and then, isn’t it? Junior (the Silver Arowana’s name) has now happily exceeded 2 feet in size (> 60 cm) and is doing well even though he is a real “tank buster”. As a matter of fact he’s trying very hard to swallow/bite/snip an one foot Oscar (Astronotus ocellatus) sharing his (I’ve, finally decided to regard it as a male although nothing can be taken for granted) tank!
He’s actually living in a 500 US Gals tank (2000 lt) located at my lfs (I wish I could have such a tank of my own!) where I visit him whenever I can. The tank (pic 1: this is how a REAL Arowana tank should look like: HUGE volume, plenty of swimming space, BIG sized tank mates, no plants at all, aquascaping consisting mainly of rocks, bogwood, LARGE size sand) is serviced by an enormous (could it have been different?) wet-dry filter (whose size is about 55 US gals - 200 lt) powered by a pump with a flow rate over 500 Us gals/hr (has to pump water back to a height of about 7 feet (2 m because of peculiar tank position). Pic 2 gives you the opportunity to look at both the Arowana’s peculiar swimming posture (and appreciate his size too) and - in the background - check the water intake (of the wet-dry filter) column.
Pic 3 makes it perfectly clear why such a fish needs LARGE sized tank mates. By the way: months ago he swallowed on the spot a sub-adult Frontosa – poor fellow! – introduced in the tank and, wrongly, believed to be of the right size. The size was right to fit the Arowana’s mouth! Feeding this fellow, from an economic point of view, is not that easy while on the practical side is perfectly easy: he’ll swallow everything (both live matter and/or prepared stuff that will fit into his mouth. Period! Shrimps, prawns, meat, goldfishes (choose healthy ones!), catfishes (he has enjoyed plecs, sometimes!), cichlids (hugh!!!) pellets (although it will be quite a task to get it used to commercial food once used to live food): he’s a real “eating machine”! For health reasons you should make sure that your Arowana is starved once a week – at least. Overfed Arowanas tend to drop down eyes (it is not really a disease but is definitely ugly to look at!) and, despite all efforts, Junior has his right eye looking a bit down so every Sunday he is on diet …
Some words now on the “tankmate” issue (provided You have enough room to house them, too). Arowana’s tankmates should be chosen to be, in the long run, REAL tankmates and not to be looked at as the “next meal” …
Starting from this statement very few fishes can stand this beautiful, mighty, fellow’s company: among them are big Amazon catfishes: i.e.: Pseudoplatistoma sp. (Tiger shovelnose, Lima shovelnose); Oscar (Astronotus ocellatus; Pic 4 shows one – out of two – living in Junior’s tank. Look at its size!), Pacu (Colossoma sp. See Pic 5; the latter will finally outgrow the Aro but it feeds on fruit and vegetable matter. This matter leads us to the last point I’d like to discuss.
To make things even worse you should consider that in the wild each Arowana, Shovelnose or Oscar will feed on the other two if given the opportunity (it means provided any of the others will fit in its mouth)! Mixing ‘n matching those fishes - adult specimens ARE expensive! - is, then, not that easy in order to avoid sad losses. By the way, you should keep in mind that to each fishes’ mind the other tank mates are regarded as food. Therefore, in the likely event you face some losses there is absolutely no reason to blame the fish, you should always blame YOURSELF !!) Well I feel a bit better now even if I’m still missing the Amazon Jungle. Anyway, I’ll finish this article with a question to all of you: How about giving an Aro a chance in your own tanks?
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