Arapaima Pond Build

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
Xmas came early...lol...
Got a 15" Arapaima at home.

One of my workers had it at home, couldn't afford the food anymore and ask me to take it.
It's severely underfed it looks, put him in the 80gallon for the next few weeks to see if he goes after the couple of hundred 1cm feeders I put in with him.
Moved the Crystal Eye in Mr.T's pond, was afraid some, but he seems ok. About 600 feeders in there as well, so enough for P'bass and Crystal to feed on. Mr.T was annoyed that Crystal stared him down and swam away.

Back to the baby, hope to get him eating over the next couple of weeks and put some weight on him.
After that, first in the Koi Pond, then see if ok with Mr.T.


Sent from my iPad using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
 
Too bad, the baby Pima was too far gone already I guess, too skinny and too slow to catch even the slowest small fish in front of his nose. Found him dead this morning.
He had spasms every now and then but was hoping he'd get to eat, didn't work out, a shame.
Have to get him a proper grave. Bit sad on it, was really hoping he'd pull through.

Anyhow, that's life I guess...
Cheers,
Luc




Sent from my iPad using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
 
That,'s a shame, sorry for you man.
Would still love to see Mr.T sharing this pond with some other monsters :)


Sent from my MK16i using Tapatalk App
 
Luc,
It's just wonderful that you rescue these magnificent creatures. Mr. T is such a fortunate fish...storm drain to his own pond! He has to be in fish heaven.
 
Sorry to hear about the baby Pima bro... That's life indeed....

Btw.... I rem u asking about the gar sometime back. I have put my 8-10" gar in the pond. The pond liner is way too thick for the gar to do any kind of damage. Atleast, as of now :). If ur using Epdm liner I guess u can get one in ur pond. Will look nice ;).
Any other monsters u considering?


Sent from my iPhone using MonsterAquariaNetwork app
 
Hello All, thanks for your kind replies.
Pond doing good, Mr. T. even better. Had a chance today measuring him properly. He was hovering along the wall.

He's now officially 150cm long!!!

Still his usual self, happy, chasing a bit, getting his hand-feeding of prawns from the cleaning-lady.
Colors never changed. He's a chocolate to red-brown body with all the red lines and faded red circles on his tail.
Beautiful, healthy big fish.

Quite funny, I went through some old emails with my sister from last year.
I told them about mr. T and how he was 90cm at that time.
At that time, I also told her that he could get up to 250-300cm in the wild.
Last line in the email: "But I think he won't get that big, if he gets to 150cm I consider myself lucky."

Boy was I wrong on that. Took only a year!
So now we're off to 200cm. Guessing he slows down growing, but 1 year should be achievable...

I brought one of the Red Tail Cats over today. He's in the growout with the Koi, he's about 25cm I guess, but I want him to get over 40cm before getting into the main pond.
Still got the second RTC at home, but will keep him in the pond there for now and move into one of the tanks after that.
For the RTC in the GrowOut, I guess he'll accelerate his growing with more space to swim and more fish around him.
Will keep you posted on it.

Cheers,
Luc
 
Quick update again... Mr. T. doing great, nothing new there.
The RTC was over 'the edge' within 2 days..guess he chased a feeder in the Koi-Pond and had a nice slide down the waterfall into the main pond....lol.
Found himself a spot on a ledge...guarding it..

Mr. T. is in a feeding frenzie again it seems. For a long time he seemed to have enough food with the 2x daily portion of prawns, occasional hot-dogs and recently chicken-breast.
But he's now chasing around and skimming the pond again for pellets and he's increasingly gulping them down, chewing them and hardly spilling any.
Good sign, pellets are cheap and he still gets his daily portions of fresh meat, but having pellets in his diet gives me a bit more assurance in terms of nutrition.

Overall, nothing much changing in the pond though. Fish growing, the normal chasing and quarreling. Koi growing nicely, there's some that I really like.
Still thinking about putting up a separate pond more to the back. Easy and cheap enough with some sand and liner, somewhere sized at 4x6 with a 2x2 bog.
To keep that one cheap, I'm not going to bother with drains. Just a large pump at the lowest point, directly into the bog which will not have a separate liner and overflow but rather a wall that's perforated near the water surface to separate the plants/gravel from the pond itself.

Ah....that's for sometime in the future.
We'll see how and when that comes.

Cheers,
Luc
 
:chillpill: ok ok ok....I got your point...lol
Promise, I'll put up some video's. Just made one with my telephone, not sure if you-tube allows upload of them...let me try..otherwise the camera this afternoon.
Been very busy with work. Not much time for other things right now, but I'll make sure today you get some.

Cheers,
Luc
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom