African arowana at Fish Story

[thebiggerthebetter]

Trying for 4th time. I talk in the video about the 3 prior failures
- arrived irreversibly damaged by fasting
- failure to feed properly (until about 8" they have to have a constant access to feed, which has to be tiny particles)
- tank overflow
- aro on aro damage

 

[jjohnwm]

These are terrific fish, I hope you have success this time. The one lost to an overfilled tank is especially heartbreaking; what a way to lose an uncommon and treasured fish that is otherwise doing well...only to have it drown...

Back in the 1970's I kept one of these for a few years. I won't say "owned" it because it actually belonged to a friend of my father, one of my earliest mentors in the hobby, who had procured two of them from the US by the simple expedient of driving across the border into the states, picking them up at an aquarium store, and driving back with them. He had only one tank that could be devoted to them and they immediately began fighting, immediately as in "while still in the bag", so after a few days of using a divider and having them jump over, slip under or otherwise defeat it, he asked me to try one in my one "big" tank, which was about 90 gallons at the time.

My water at that time was sourced form an Artesian well which ran continuously in the basement of my father's house. I had only just completed a primitive but effective continuous drip system, whereby a constant flow-through of fresh spring water. So, the tank had a constant flow-through of fresh spring water, at least 2 or 3 tank volumes of water changed daily. No filters, no aerators, and no problems. The fish thrived for several years, eating only flakes, frozen brine (baby at first and eventually adult) and other tiny food particles. It never even looked at any other fish, not even new-born livebearers, and never fought with or bullied anything else, even once it grew to maybe 16 or 18 inches.

My friend's fish lived well by itself, in a tank equipped with state-of-the-art filtration...an airpowered undergravel filter ...which he stirred up several times daily to release a cloud of organic particles into the water, which the fish appeared to filter for food. His was also completely non-aggressive and non-predatory.

After perhaps three years, I moved out of that house...beginning a life-long quest for a system that was even remotely as easy, fool-proof and effective for keeping fish...and we carefully transferred "my" fish back to my friend's house. Mine was by that time several inches longer than his, but the fighting began immediately and they were separated and kept apart going forward. My friend passed away not long afterwards and I don't know what happened to most of his fish, including the two Heterotis.

Looking forward to following your progress with this one.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

JJ, great story, thank you so much! Your account makes the following even more astonishing to me but I have no grounds to doubt it.

...

Great and useful input from a peer on YT. It blew me away though. I didn’t expect an African arowana as small as 4 inches to take down live guppies or gambusia, let alone easily.

Tashfiqmannan: I raised one from just 4 inches, fed exclusively on feeder guppies the first couple months was super low maintenance

Fish Story: Are you sure you are talking about African arowana? What you say sounds like any other arowana - SA, Asian, Australian - but not African. Can a 4 inch African arowana eat a guppy? If I had to guess, I'd say no but I'm open to getting schooled. ... Our African arowana has been feeding adequately from day two, I'd say. It filter feeds on tiny pellets and crumbs of large pellets aggressively. So there seems to not be a perceived need to go the feeder route.

Tashfiqmannan: absolutely certain brother, we had a large shipment of African imports last year and only the guys who had constant supply of guppies were able to grow them out big. I even tried tubifex which he ate a little but the guppies were def easier. That’s why I was a little surprised you were acclimating your new guy with the mahseer. The feeder guppies we catch locally are relatively small anyways... I personally was surprised as well since I also considered them to be filter feeders at the young size, but that’s what the LFS was sustaining them on and yeah he took to the feeders straight from the jump.... Yeah given how your systems are all plumbed tg I’d avoid feeders unless he’s showing signs of getting skinny, and if that does happen prolly best to keep him in a isolated tank system with the feeders. Either way, now you know the failsafe

Fish-Story: I am very surprised but this is so good to know! Thank you for this info. I'll deposit it in our thread as part of valuable knowledge.

 

[jjohnwm]

Amazing. My and my friend's experience was a sample size of two fish, i.e. almost meaningless. But this fellow says that a number of people had success with this feeding strategy!

I vividly remember both of our fish literally turning up their noses at baby guppies, and even frozen adult brine shrimp at that size. Even full-size mosquito larvae were not taken, nor even Daphnia. It wasn't until the fish were closer to 6 or 7 inches before they would actually swallow adult brine shrimp or full-size mosquito larvae, instead of just sometimes mouthing them and then rejecting them. It didn't seem to be a choice on the part of the fish not to eat, but rather an actual inability to swallow the item. And I'm dead positive that neither ever ate another fish, regardless of how big they were and/or how small the other fish was. It seemed that it was not a case of deciding not to eat something after tasting it, but rather an actual inability to swallow. It was one of the most charming things about them; they allowed that incomparable type of display that combines schools of tiny fish living fearlessly and safely with single monsters thousands of times their size. Like watching a Blue Whale swim through a school of tuna, with neither species taking notice of the other.

Oddly enough, the only other fish species that I have had 100% success with that type of cohabitation is the Osphronemus gourami. Mine never ate even the smallest of fish, and also never interacted aggressively with any large fish other than members of its own species, which it absolutely would not tolerate. But I read numerous accounts of other keepers whose Osphronemus fight with other fish their size and gleefully gulp down little guys. Certainly, watching a GG gulping down big mouthfuls of dandelion leaves makes it abundantly clear that it isn't burdened with a small-diameter throat. What's the deal? That's a lot of variation in behaviour in one species.

Maybe we need to round up a few taxonomic splitters...there are certainly plenty of them around...and set them loose on these two genera? A year later, there would be 47 species of Osphronemus and 65 of Heterotis. Maybe even split the genera up into a dozen or so smaller ones for good measure, a la Corydoras cats? That'll keep us on our toes!