I have a Q for Delgado...Have you considered the possibility of a nutritional need that is not being met. Here I am talking about some trace mineral. some of those can be very important. For instance and let me site a real example here. there are a number of trace minerals Manganese and folic acid are 2 of several that can cause deficiencies for poultry. The result is that the chicken's, (or peacocks, or whatever fowl really) legs turn in and cripple the bird. We feed krill to heighten the color, but other than that we try to feed freshwater things to our freshwater residents and salt water things to our salt water residents. I suppose there's no real harm in feeding seafood to a freshwater fish, but when we got our Blacks they highly recommended that we feed pinky mice. I keep hearing of a National Geographic movie [if someone can tell me exactly how to find this movie or what the title is I would be grateful] where a silver is shown rocketing out of the water to grab a bird off of a branch. Could it be possible that even something as simple as an Iron deficiency could cause the issue? Just thinking and wondering here because it is important to know and figure this out, but I sure wont be conducting any experiments on these magnificent animals! Kind of a tough thing isn't it. I have seen a couple silvers that look down. I have never seen a black with the look down problem, although seeing Blacks is rarer anyway, so I'm sure I haven't come across an equal number of them. Anyway just a few thoughts that I was pondering. We have been told by some excellent sources that small mammals and birds would naturally be a part of their diet. I breed mice and rats for snakes so they aren't a difficult thing for me to come by. I consider myself lucky. After having said all this though, I wonder if I should throw in some chicken....hmmmm.
Educating MFK on the Silver Arowana (REVISED)
- Thread starter DeLgAdO
- Start date
Please allow me to cite wet web media. The article can be found at http://www.wetwebmedia.com/FWSubWebIndex/osteoglossiforms.html
and states:
"Arowanas are celebrated mouthbrooders, males have slightly offset jaws accommodating developing eggs and young. Females are slightly larger and broader, especially during spawning season. Young are retained in the buccal cavity for a period of one to two weeks. Shown, an uneven-mouthed male and female Osteoglossum bicirrhosum in captivity."
By the by there's a nice a pic of each sex in the article for the person who was looking for dimorphism of the sexes.
and states:
"Arowanas are celebrated mouthbrooders, males have slightly offset jaws accommodating developing eggs and young. Females are slightly larger and broader, especially during spawning season. Young are retained in the buccal cavity for a period of one to two weeks. Shown, an uneven-mouthed male and female Osteoglossum bicirrhosum in captivity."
By the by there's a nice a pic of each sex in the article for the person who was looking for dimorphism of the sexes.
sorry about the link...the filters must think I'm swearing...it's too bad its a GREAT article that most here would probably enjoy reading. It also covers the arapaimas and other species. I know I like to read everything I possibly can and yes you do come across different views, but having had a personal experience with Bob Fenner's advice on Columbian shark catfish (formerly known as Arius seemani, its now Hexaminthes seemani or something (they keep changing the name of this species)) and taking our fish to a brackish almost salt water environment through his instruction (personally) and seeing the results in the fishes' health. Well it was a scary yet remarkable experience, because everyone at the time told us it shouldn't be done. So when he wrote this article about the aros we listened. And although I'm sure that this method may fail for a few individuals, I feel confident that it would work for most. The conclusion of which is male and which is female according to the jaw method also goes along with the size and shape differentiation for the sexes with our own pair, and beyond that we also see that the female's color is not as bright as the males, which is more usual in the natural world as well. Of course that may be a more difficult thing to assess in a silver, but the blacks are pretty colorful. So all four things line up, the jaw method, the length, the shape, and even color which was not mentioned in the article. So I'm pretty sure we have a girl and a boy, The girl having the shorter lower jaw, being longer, being deeper bodied, and being duller in color as well. I am honest, however, if they ever did decide to breed, and I see that the one we suspect as being the female is carrying the young in her mouth, then we will know for sure that we got it completely wrong.
interestingtessigal;565464; said:
oh i had a pair of footer columbians, they where kept in freshwater with alittle salt (1 tblspn per 5 gal)
Ok if you want to try a safe experiment...and this can be really fun. First off let me say that we had a trio of shark cats and they got up to about 4 inches and started just getting disease. We didn't know what the heck was going on. The water tested perfect. We were changing out 25% a week since they can be found in the Rio Negro a tributary of the Amazon, they love fast flowing water. Ok so I wrote in to Bob and he said bring em to salt and this is how...so we started very slowly. Well actually that's not entirely true, let me back track a bit,... so here we are with these beauties, and we had had them for quite a while and had grown attached to them. So what we did was we took a baby from the LFS and decided to bring him to salt immediately to see if our own would do ok, because we didn't want to risk them. In 2 hours we acclimated a baby. Now we also had Green Spotted Puffers (GSP's) in the tank and according to Bob's instructions and with the help of a chick who calls herself PufferPunk we slowly and painstakingly brought our freshwater tank to salt. Every couple of weeks we would change the Specific Gravity (SG) up by .002. By doing this slowly, we never lost the cycle in our tank. The bacteria died and were replaced slowly. There were a few really cool things that happened.
1. When we got up to SG of approx. 1.017 coraline algae (the desired algae in salt tanks (yup that purple and maroon colored stuff that covers the walls in a salt tank) started growing. This meant that we had effectively taken our little fishies downstream to the mouth of the river where such things could grow...It was way cool.
2. The little fish that we were sure was going to be sacrificed in the name of science, lived and actually thrived and is now the largest fish of the four of them, because I believe he was put into the proper environment at a younger age and therefore time in the bad environment didn't stunt his growth.
3. These catfish are known for eating anything that fits in their mouths. there was a great difference in size between the original 3 and the little guinea pig. They did not eat him, but recognized him as one of their own. they always positioned him in the middle of the group with the largest fish directly above him, almost as if they were protecting him. could have certainly been coincidence. Perhaps in an odd way he bonded with that particular large fish. but the behaviors we were seeing were astounding.
4. All of the diseases that they were getting in a tank that was testing perfect left as mysteriously as they came without any treatment.
1. When we got up to SG of approx. 1.017 coraline algae (the desired algae in salt tanks (yup that purple and maroon colored stuff that covers the walls in a salt tank) started growing. This meant that we had effectively taken our little fishies downstream to the mouth of the river where such things could grow...It was way cool.
2. The little fish that we were sure was going to be sacrificed in the name of science, lived and actually thrived and is now the largest fish of the four of them, because I believe he was put into the proper environment at a younger age and therefore time in the bad environment didn't stunt his growth.
3. These catfish are known for eating anything that fits in their mouths. there was a great difference in size between the original 3 and the little guinea pig. They did not eat him, but recognized him as one of their own. they always positioned him in the middle of the group with the largest fish directly above him, almost as if they were protecting him. could have certainly been coincidence. Perhaps in an odd way he bonded with that particular large fish. but the behaviors we were seeing were astounding.
4. All of the diseases that they were getting in a tank that was testing perfect left as mysteriously as they came without any treatment.
by the way i have known many people who have raised them entirely in fresh water and have grown them to be large, but have also heard an equal number of complaints of people saying that like us their fish got to be about 4 inches and died from disease, even though their water tested perfect, even LFS owners have told me that. Our largest, the guinea pig fish who is named Fred is now almost 9.5 in. and is clearly an 1.5 in. longer than the original trio!
