Arowana Advice

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Vanimal

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 2, 2012
935
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Florida
I've been wanting to get an Arowana and have been watching a lot of videos of them on YouTube and I've noticed a lot of the older, larger ones have droop eye. I was wondering how I could prevent this if I do get an Arowana. I heard it has something to do with their diet but I'm not sure. Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks


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When it comes to DE's in arowanas, specially the silver ones, dark matter is even simpler to prove. Each person here will only give you his/her personal guess. My bet is on protein-rich foods based on a few silver arowanas I have observed plus genetics.

PS: You will probably get more specific answers in the Ancient Fish/Arowana section.
 
I read a lot on silvers and they said it was all diet and I was very careful not to over feed and fed lean meats and pellets. My aro had no drop eye until it reached about 16 inches and all of the sudden it happened on one eye. No change in attitude or appetite. But I found some stuff talking on how overbred they were and that it could cause drop eye. So try to feed them well and how they have good genes in my opinion.


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Do top feeding like live insects that float or know how to swim. DE usually happens when they look for food below.

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I think have a nightlight in your tank might help with drop eye. If your room is pitch black at night your arowana's eye turns down & looks just like drop eye. I now have blue LED lights at night & my fishes eyes stay the same.
I also have frogbit on top of my water to keep the fish looking up. I think the main thing is large enough tank with good filters & good diet , mine gets meal worms , white meat, & earth worms
 
If you rause you silver arowana in a tank there is a 99.9% chance it will have DE. Only method that seems to work in preventing DE is raising in a pond. Many keepers including myself have experience seeing their silver arowana develop DE shortly after the aro had experienced severe head trauma. This seems to be more of a trigger then the actual cause as many silver develop DE over time, though it is impossible to keep a silver in a tank without it experiencing some trauma to the head. I believe diet, type feedings, tankmates, bare bottom, bright lights have very little if anything to do with DE. Most likely just keeping an aro within a small area leads to lack of use of it's eyes, binocularvision and the muscles around the eyes. This IMO is what leads to DE.

Good luck maybe being in FLA you could raise some silvers in a pond.
 
Vanimal said:
Are you saying that's good or bad??
Click to expand...

Good. Asian arowanas are known to have very few drop eye cases. I personally attribute this to protein-rich food. As per my observation here in China, the arowanas with DE are usually the old ones coz the owners have started neglecting them thinking it can already fend for itself. The no longer give the fish a proper nutrition. Instead they will simply tend to toss goldfish in the tansk they live in and leave it at that. However, the case is still not very much like that of silvers coz the other feeders here are also protein-rich unlike the common goldfish and rosies sold in other continents. As for black arowanas, that I do not know but there are a lot less of them in the trade, I guess, to provide a census. These are my personal opinion and is not peer reviewed so take it with a pinch of salt. Actually, there is already an article in the Ancient Fish/Arowanas made specially for this that I have researched before I got my own silver arowana. Here is the link to that article.
 
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