Aro Swimming Upside Down! Need Urgent HELP!

[H]-[H]

not sure if this helps, but i had an aro once that floated like yours, what i did saw to hold it gently and i made it swim around, lika playing with a toy, and i massaged its abdomen GENTLY, then it swam as if nothing happened the next day....not sure if what i just did had helped it though

How long did you massage its abdomen? I might try this..

When temperatures are high any toxic reactions are worsened. you know when science teachers explain chemical reactions? and these are sped up with higher temps.
your ammonia becomes more toxic, cause the percentage of nasty ammonia is higher when the temps are higher. if the water is suspect or overfed, the water will also hold less oxygen when temps are higher. also, if there is an osmotic balance problem this will not be made better by increasing temps because respiration and cell activity is increased. turning temps down slightly will thus buy you the needed time to fix the issues.
If an arow is sick, why would you turn the temperature up unless the temperature was far too low and making it sluggish to begin with. so turning up temps should not be done if the temp is say 23c-28c and the fish takes a turn for the worse at those temps.

you might have been lucky, sometimes big arows will go on their side during transport and then have swim bladder issues.
I am not convinced that them going on their side is just a matter of them not being able to sit right way up and so then over time that sets in or if there is some other unnkown causeing this from the start. as in maybe they are stressed and groggy and it just gets worse..

anyway, if the fish can be held right, sometimes it will just work itself out and come good.
but if this is a true thing, you didnt want to wait and see if it was just a temporary balance thing or if it was a water issue. i really wanted to verify if your water had different calcium levels etc. sometimes tap water can have too much chlorine but you say you treated that but people can only go off the dose guides because they dont have a chlorine test kit on hand to really know what the water is doing, or to calculate the treatment dose.

I really didn't know that higher temp can cause so much chain reaction..
People always say bump up the temp when the fish is unwell & I followed this guide blindly without even knowing what it does.. But I do know that higher temp increase metabolism..
& yeah, you are right.. I just follow the dosage guides for the chlorine treatment.. Don't have test kits available.. The ones I had aren't really accurate..

 

[ausarow]

30c is the upper range of what arows would like so yeah you would only want do do that if you had reason to think the water was spot on vs some funky stuff going on there before hand or if the water was so cold before hand that the fish was shutting down, and in that case id suggest to raise it slowly to say 23 first.. if its sick for reasons other than the cold, it could make it sicker faster. otherwise the best range is 25-28. its a hard call when a fish is crook on what t do really unless you can test and see what was wrong in the begining but its a good move to make sure the water the fish is in is back to basic and clean.

 

[H]-[H]

30c is the upper range of what arows would like so yeah you would only want do do that if you had reason to think the water was spot on vs some funky stuff going on there before hand or if the water was so cold before hand that the fish was shutting down, and in that case id suggest to raise it slowly to say 23 first.. if its sick for reasons other than the cold, it could make it sicker faster. otherwise the best range is 25-28. its a hard call when a fish is crook on what t do really unless you can test and see what was wrong in the begining but its a good move to make sure the water the fish is in is back to basic and clean.

Thanks for all the info.. I've already turned the heater off..
I live in the tropics & the average temp here is 26c~28c all year round..

 

[ausarow]

no worries, when a fish suddenly turns crook and its not like a slow process of disease having set in its hard to know whats gone wrong. fish will turn on their side or swim with little control for a heap of reasons, ammonia, pH etc... so good luck, hopefully it wont occur again. if it does try and test and look backwards to how it all began and then maybe you can work out what it was. if chlorine was a problem, which i doubt it you added anti chlorine, you could probably smell or taste it. plenty of times i have had tap water with more chlorine than what should be present because the council sometimes overdose to try correct a known bacterial bloom or in pre emption of pipe maintenance/disturbance for example.

 

[Pharaoh]

how do you protect the swim bladder?

how do you do that?

**Disclaimer.... I am by no means an arowana expert. I've just owned a few.

I was told by some fellow hobbyists that you have to really want to keep aros in water the entire time they are being relocated. This includes moving them from the tank to the transport contain and back. It may not be the actual swim bladder, but my guess is that it is related to air intake by the fish and the inability to dispel that air once taken in. I've had four successful moves since and never had any problems.

Your aro had the same symptoms?
Man, this really s**ks... I think I'm going to have another sleepless night tonight...........

Yes he did, but he didn't last this long. Once I saw it, it was only about 24 hrs and he was gone. Hopefully from what I am seeing, your situation may be different.

 

[ausarow]

there might be something in that!. i have pulled arows from water and not had that happen though, longer trips in shallow water bags i guess could make the bladder play up and its common known amongst farmers that send out big ones in overnight transport that it happens.
makes me wonder if they are getting too much air in there like over blowing up your boyancy control device while diving under water. maybe they can even take in some water too.
i think the arapaimas developed bigger vessels within their bladder which helps them breathe air so i gather it is linked by a tube to the atmosphere rather than only being able to fill up or expell via a blood vesell exchange of oxygen..
if this is so, then it might be that thrashing and gulping through stress could lead em to take in too much but if this was the case, i cant see how the fish would die from having too much in there because all else being well you would think the fish can still get air across the gills to survive even if it was wallowing around the tank.. and if it was good water, say without the stress leading to other problem, then the fish should be able to regulate its air bladder over time. just very hard to tell if the fish came good from regulating its bladder if the case may be, or if the fish was swimming funny from something else and then that got fixed in time. with either of you people that had problems, did the fish almost float to the top and seemed to be fighting that or was the fish just going from side to side or haywire in mid water column or on the bottom? maybe there is a way to tell the difference going by the symptoms as welll as using water test history? but to confirm, we would want to have water test show indicate the problem and then see if the symptom correlated with that problem again and again.

 

[H]-[H]

no worries, when a fish suddenly turns crook and its not like a slow process of disease having set in its hard to know whats gone wrong. fish will turn on their side or swim with little control for a heap of reasons, ammonia, pH etc... so good luck, hopefully it wont occur again. if it does try and test and look backwards to how it all began and then maybe you can work out what it was. if chlorine was a problem, which i doubt it you added anti chlorine, you could probably smell or taste it. plenty of times i have had tap water with more chlorine than what should be present because the council sometimes overdose to try correct a known bacterial bloom or in pre emption of pipe maintenance/disturbance for example.

I was out the whole night and when I got home, the aro was able to submerge its back!! I'm not sure if it's able to submerge its whole body since the water level is just a little bit more than its height.. I'll keep it this way for two more days before filling up the rest of the tank & see how it goes.. Wow, am I excited!! ^^

& to be honest, now that I think back.. I'm to blame for the whole incident..
Cause I suspect my tank water had ammonia outbreak due to my laziness to do water change.. (Now I know why my previous fish were all skittish & acting weird.. I gave them away to make room for the aro)
I'm just glad that the aro survived.. Really GLAD..

 

[ausarow]

sweet relief! do the addition of new water ever so slowly. can i suggest to get your source water ready in a big tub or something first. dont add to tank and then dose with anti chlor.
then watch out for any signs he is going bad again. i know someone had an arow that survived this kind of thing, not sure if its the same though... and it turned upside down on every water change. almost like there was poison metals in the water from the roof, but it might have been the difference in water too from roof to tank.

the interesting thing was this tank had no water changes for a while, but then changed a bit to rain water. but are you saying yours went from your mates into your ammonia water?
what water did it get transported in? did yous use the same tank water it was in or lift it intosome new water and maybe his water was a bit funky too.?

 

[H]-[H]

sweet relief! do the addition of new water ever so slowly. can i suggest to get your source water ready in a big tub or something first. dont add to tank and then dose with anti chlor.
then watch out for any signs he is going bad again. i know someone had an arow that survived this kind of thing, not sure if its the same though... and it turned upside down on every water change. almost like there was poison metals in the water from the roof, but it might have been the difference in water too from roof to tank.

the interesting thing was this tank had no water changes for a while, but then changed a bit to rain water. but are you saying yours went from your mates into your ammonia water?
what water did it get transported in? did yous use the same tank water it was in or lift it intosome new water and maybe his water was a bit funky too.?

Thanks for the advice but getting the water ready in a big tub is really inconvenient due to my disability.. I use a hose which makes draining water easier for me..

Yes, the aro went straight from my friend's into my tank that has ammonia outbreak..
Basically, the water from the bag which the aro was in was mixed with my tank water.. Not sure bout his water but his fishes seemed fine..

 

[ausarow]

ok, so higher temps make the ammonia more toxic, lets assume this was the problem. maybe there was nitrites too. that is why i mentioned the salt. salt reduces the nitrite spike in the fishes body. its a commonly used thing for that. the fish can get what they call brown blood disease.
many fish that are in ammonia water will spin around and swim weird. ive seen australian bass do it and changed the water and they stop it within five minutes. the other thing is when australian bass are tiny fry, and the water has ammonia or too much other nutrient you will see the swim bladder is enlarged on those affected in a tank while others are fine in another rearing tank.

then, the ones in the polluted water will float to the top with a big swim bladder and then die over time.
so maybe, this is the same thing that can happen to arows.

with goldfish, with nitrite spikes, you can see the effects in the tails.
the tail will end up with bubbles of gas all through it.
when a scuba diver has a build up of nitrogen, which is a form of ammonia, the diver will have bubbles of nitrogen form in his blood too. that can then then dislodge and go to the brain and kill them.

so the thing to do is remove the nitrogen from being in the water so that some of it can come out of the fish and go back into the water across the gills.

with scuba divers, they will put them in a decompression chamber.
another thing they can do if divers are going to be deep for long periods and be at risk, is to give them special air bottles without so much nitrogen in the air tank. that way it cant build up as fast cause they do not have it in their intake.

so the fixes are, lower the ammonia levels via water changes or better filtration or by stealing bio media from another tank.. lower the temp because the ammonia is less toxic of a form with lower temps, and add some salt to reduce the nitrite spike.