Huge Arapaima gigas at the Dallas World Aquarium

[dbenson]

You can see several enormous arapaimas on the Dallas Wolrd Aquarium manatee netcam.

http://www.dwazoo.com/netcams.html

I was watching earlier and one swam RIGHT in front of the camera with its mouth wide open :WHOA:

-Doug

[dbenson]

some screen captures...

I think there are about 4 of them (see last pic), as well as some large pbass (?) and some biiig turtles.

[fishyboi]

DAMN, thats a big tank for all the gigas

[Steve_89]

Wow.

Very nice.

[ewurm]

Nice pics, I would like to see that aquarium.

[dbenson]

I actually haven't been in a while, but its a really great aquarium. They have a great ray pool (stingrays are illegal in texas :swear: ) and I hear they have some monster silver arowanas. :thumbsup:

[TankBuster]

Man, I was going to go there today and it got too late, might show up tomorrow. How much was it a person to get in? dbenson, Im in Rockwall by the way.

[dbenson]

I think its around $17.00 per person, but definitely worth it.

[mon]

thats impressive....

[Euge]

man sweet pics. THe third pic down with the pBass in it looks like the bpass was photoshopped into there.. The colours on it are amazing

[DrBranDo]

impressive.
thx for sharing.

[DrBranDo]

oh how big are they approx?
4ft or more???

[michael]

Very nice looking aquarium. Wish we had another aquarium around here but the camden one.

[dbenson]

I went today and saw them in person. There are 6 or 7 of them and they're all around 4-5 feet long. I also got to see them feed the silver arowanas ( fairly large, hardly any drop eye at all!) and the spotted rays. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera :swear:. There was also a medium jardini arowana in the outdoor pond at the entrance.

[Zoodiver]

I used to be the Sr. Aquarist there for a long time. That exhibit was a daily chore, let me tell you. Those arapaima are less than three years old. I'd say they're closer to 6' plus. The curved glass doesn't do them justice at all. That pool is roughly 200,000 gallons. It is 4 feet at the shallow point (heading into manatee holding) and right around 20 feet deep in the back.

Outdoors are Asian arows....at least they were when I was there.

EDIT: If you guys watch at 12:30 (local time) there is a daily feeding with a diver in the water.

[amazonfishman]

Yeah its a neat place, I spoke to the curator out there over christmas break and they were barely over 2 years old the biggest ones are around 5ft I would say. I've got a ton of pics on my other comp that I'll try to post soon. The tank is close to 80ft wide i would say with a big island in the middle. Shortly before I visited a couple weeks prior the curator told me a arapaima grabbed one of the ducks off the top of the water then spit him out later and that they have had the HUGE red tails take 1 out also. The tank is so big that there are 4ft red tails schooling in groups of 4-5 in the middle sections of water and schools of peacock bass as big as 10 fish or more that I saw. Most of the Pbass are probably in the 5-7lb range I don't think I saw any bigger than that for now. Theres also a 3ft tiger shovelnose in there, tons of huge what look like motoro rays and huge amazon turtles. Its one of the best public aquariums I've ever been to lots of other polka dot rays in different displays, several 2-3ft silver arrowanas, and an electric eel. The only amazon exhibit I've seen that was anywhere close was in Italy last summer, the tank was much much smaller but they had several Tiger shovelnose in the 3ft range, a 4ft planiceps, tons of huge pacu, and another weird shovelnose that I didn't know what it was kinda like a hybrid looking planiceps and a tigershovelnose cross. ~Trent

[WyldFya]

Man I want to make the trip down there just to see that tank alone! Sounds awesome.

[dimfer]

awesome

[DarthLungFish]

Cool Video.:grinyes:

[AngelicGreenTerror]

The tank the arapaimas are in remind of Sea World in San Diego. Very neat place, but they have small silver dollars swimming around. They only had one arapaima from what I saw, but around 6-7 Red Tail Catfish, with more then 5 Stingrays of some sort. It was very neat to seem them with manatees though.