about the fat drop eye theory

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dvs

Candiru
MFK Member
Mar 28, 2006
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I have just read the thread about educating mfk on the silver aro and was thinking about the part where drop eye is discussed. One popular theory is that the fat content of a captive aro's diet causes a buildup of fat around the eye causing the eye to drop. The theory is considered flawed because of experiments with silvers on lowfat diets.

My question is couldn't a low fat diet still lead to an overweight fish given that the fish is not getting the same level of exercise it would get in the wild. Then it would be more of a balance of caloric intake with respect to the size of the fish and the amount of exercise it gets. Drop eye could be avoided if that indeed were the cause by simply not overfeeding the fish.

Does anyone have an opinion on this?
 
Severe head trauma, or repeated blows to the head trigger DE.
 
The head blows seem like a good theory too, but why wouldn't other aros get it? Do other aros slam against the tank like silvers? I have already seen mine do this a few times when spooked and it makes me cringe every time.
 
Bderick67;2689880; said:
Severe head trauma, or repeated blows to the head trigger DE.
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I agree. I think we usually see silvers with DE because they're more skittish than any other species so they would ram into the glass everytime they get scared. While africans from what i heard are pretty calm and rarely get freaked out, thus we rarely hear of africans with DE. Also, we hear about aros that only have DE on one side, I would think that if it was due to excess fat, it would be evenly distributed instead of only on one side. As for other aros, Ive seen silvers and jars with it. Haven't seen DE with any asian aros including my own, but there are people on MFk that have, and I have yet to hear of blacks or africans with DE.
 
dvs;2689921; said:
The head blows seem like a good theory too, but why wouldn't other aros get it? Do other aros slam against the tank like silvers? I have already seen mine do this a few times when spooked and it makes me cringe every time.
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Well "other aros" are a different fish. For whatever reason silvers are more prone to getting DE then other aros. I have a black aro(which seem to be immune to DE) she gets spooked and acts nothing near what my silvers do. She does however have the occasional head bump though.

With one of my silvers I watched DE develop within hours of severe head trauma, this happen one two separate occasions with both eyes
 
Bderick67;2689993; said:
Well "other aros" are a different fish. For whatever reason silvers are more prone to getting DE then other aros. I have a black aro(which seem to be immune to DE) she gets spooked and acts nothing near what my silvers do. She does however have the occasional head bump though.

With one of my silvers I watched DE develop within hours of severe head trauma, this happen one two separate occasions with both eyes
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I agree with this. Maybe this summer, or whenever i have time ill try to prove it. Im thinking of fixing my leaking 180 gal and cover each "wall" with huge bags filled with the soft filter media, and then drape a layer of plants over the bags. Ill get a new silver aro. By doing this, the aro wont be able to see out of the tank, thus calming it down, and ill also have really dim lights so it'll be like a constant acclimation process. it will be treated like all the other aros i have, so it'll be eating the same thing, at the same time, with the same feeding schedule, and when it hits 16-20" we might finally be able to prove what cuases DE.
 
MsMassPoly;2690069; said:
how do you explain De on wild fish then???I say its just a genetic trait.
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Who says Wild aros don't get DE? I believe they do in fact get DE in some cases, though in the wild they are able to recover or they die. I would love to see proof of an abundance of silver aros in the wild with DE. You have claimed to see films in the past but don't ever reply to my requests for info on such films.

I again will post the video of some wild, with no DE. Just gotta find it:irked:
 
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