African arowana from Wes

[Egon]

Thank you, Egon. Good description, easy to follow. Sounds like you go a very long way to feed your arowana a good and diverse diet. What size is yours at 3yo? Are the amounts sufficient for the fish to grow well? Would love to see your setup, of course.

My guy is just 12” I’ve talked to Hao about this and I think I’m feeding enough and the tank is big enough. I trickle the tank with fresh water 24/7. Most of my fish are around 16 years old. Maybe I just have a slow grower or someone is exaggerating a little, probably a little of both

 

[Hao]

Thank you, Egon. Good description, easy to follow. Sounds like you go a very long way to feed your arowana a good and diverse diet. What size is yours at 3yo? Are the amounts sufficient for the fish to grow well? Would love to see your setup, of course.


Wow. I'd say this is the biggest specimen I've ever come across in captivity. Thank you for this!

I don't know if you remember JohnPTC and his 10k gallon setup. He had like 2-3 giant african aros in that setup. Easily 36"+. They were massive! I've definitely seen a couple more big african aros 30"+ in captivity especially in Asia.

 

[Hao]

Here’s a photo of a roughly 90 cm (3 ft) African aro caught in Kenya by Fujita Kengo. Apparently the older local villagers said this specimen is still “small”. so I wouldn’t surprised if they reached closer to 4 ft in the wild at their absolute max.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Egon Thank you. Sounds unusually small for the age. I wonder why. In my prior couple attempts they reached a foot in half a year or so. Good to know anyway that there can be differences.

Hao Thank you. I remember JohnPTC but he was participating little when I joined or so it seemed. I saw his 10K. Need to revisit his threads on it to rediscover his african aros. My reading says they should grow to 3ft easily and more. Still, even in your experience there is a glaring scarcity of peers showing captive grown big ones. Sounds like they are harder to raise to big sizes, harder than RTC, silver arowana, and other hardy hobby staples

 

[Egon]

Correction: just checked my pics and my Afrowana is 4 years old! It might be 14”. It’s hard to tell. It swims so fast I can’t get a good pic!!! Fins are perfect, seems heavy not skinny. Here’s a few pics and a FTS

 

[Hao]

Egon Thank you. Sounds unusually small for the age. I wonder why. In my prior couple attempts they reached a foot in half a year or so. Good to know anyway that there can be differences.

Hao Thank you. I remember JohnPTC but he was participating little when I joined or so it seemed. I saw his 10K. Need to revisit his threads on it to rediscover his african aros. My reading says they should grow to 3ft easily and more. Still, even in your experience there is a glaring scarcity of peers showing captive grown big ones. Sounds like they are harder to raise to big sizes, harder than RTC, silver arowana, and other hardy hobby staples

Oh yes. You could also check YouTube videos. I forgot if he had his own channel or the videos were on MFK YouTube channel.

Yeah, I’ve definitely seen a lot of hobbyist unsuccessfully raising African aros over the years. Generally feeding issue. Even the ones that do live, alot of them are quite underweight when you compare them to their wild caught counterparts. Despite all that, there are still plenty of people who were successful in raising them beautifully. But like you said the success rate is definitely lower than the typical monster fish mainly because of the feeding issue.

Also regarding Egon’s experience, it’s definitely bound to happen, not every fish will reach the “max” size. I guess it’ll come down to genetics and care. Over the years, I’ve seen people keeping Australian lungfishes that are way too small for its age like there’s a few I’ve seen that were 20-30 years old and only around 2 feet in length. I’ve seen an 3-4 year old Australian lungfishes that’s maybe about 10”-12”. Even alligator gars, seen some around 5-20 years old but only 20”-30” in size. (Stopped growing already.)

 

[Egon]

I have an AUL (Genius) that’s 20 years old I’ve had him 16 years. 3 feet and 25 pounds! Never had a problem feeding him!!!
But I agree my Aro is probably just not getting enough food to grow. It’s a very very active fish. I’m going to double the frozen food feedings. Currently I just feed frozen in the morning. I’m going to start right now and feed at night too.

 

[Hao]

I have an AUL (Genius) that’s 20 years old I’ve had him 16 years. 3 feet and 25 pounds! Never had a problem feeding him!!!
But I agree my Aro is probably just not getting enough food to grow. It’s a very very active fish. I’m going to double the frozen food feedings. Currently I just feed frozen in the morning. I’m going to start right now and feed at night too.

Very nice! Sounds normal for an Australian lungfish. From what I've seen the average size for them at 5-20 years old is usually 3 to 3.5 feet (of course, some stay smaller or get bigger).
As for the Aro, keep us posted!

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

That arowana probably caused me a few gray hair but it feeds now. Took it 2 weeks. I was sure it was a dead fish swimming.

 

[jjohnwm]

Is it possible that the folks who seem to have success with small Afrowanas (I love that term and am stealing it from Egon ) are just barely carrying the fish through its earliest delicate and tough-to-feed stage?

The fish scrapes through a long period of near-starvation, growing very slowly until it reaches a larger, easier-to-keep stature. At that point it can easily be fed as much as possible, but it's already somewhat stunted from its food-deprived formative youth.

I've seen plenty of fish that had very lean times as youngsters, sometimes for years...due to lack of food, poor water conditions, etc...and when they then received better care and feeding, they still never achieved a size that would be considered normal. Are Afrowanas an extreme example of this?