asian arow is not an obligatory air breather?

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ausarow

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 7, 2008
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australia
ok, so we are told that among the arapama and the silver that they can breathe air and they have evolved blood capilliaries in the swim bladder to allow them.
it is said again and again on the internet that the asian arowana can do this too.
but i feel this may be mixed messaging coming from the confusion of the term "arowana" being used.
does anyone have any scientific verification that the asian actually shares this ability?

I once came across a specialists webpage on this but i can not find this.
it is rather important information for risk assessment of the species.
can anyone help? has anyone seen this before?

it was a US teacher that had shown various evolutions to aid survival and i am sure that he said asian arowana are obligatory WATER breathers.

thanks
 
If it takes air in, it is perfectly negigeable.
 
thanks for your reply but i gotta say i'm sorry man, i dont know what you mean or what that means.
negligible? meaning that it wouldnt matter?
if thats what you mean my problem is that it matters to these government people, they seem to have given a score of two points for hardiness going by these parameters below. thats the worst score possible. 0-2.
salinity? yeah right, grouped in primary. the freshest of freshwater fish
temp?. uh uh, 24-30 tropical. dies at low temps.
pH?. will take a swing but over time. pH change due to logging has been blamed for deaths and pH in ponds blamed for deaths.
has organs for air breathing? not sure but i dont think so.
The species will not survive outside of water for long periods of time?. no, within ten minutes is dead unless its cold or knocked out.

i found what i thought was the information but it turns out it was saying that arapaima was an obligate air breather but bircossum was an obligate water breather.

it is said that the arapaima can not live unless it comes up to the surface say every ten minutes.
they are born with lack of decent sized gills and somewhat dependant on surfacing.

still i can not find any science to show that asians have this kind of system.
 
i think i know what you meant now. if they do have air breathing capability, because you dont see them having it in a big way..its small and not prominent and so wouldnt be significant.
 
ausarow;4677298; said:
i think i know what you meant now. if they do have air breathing capability, because you dont see them having it in a big way..its small and not prominent and so wouldnt be significant.
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The above is exactly what I mean.

I have had them for more than 15 years and they sometimes gulp for air, but it has nothing to do with the Arapaima's or Bichir's breathing.

The fact of the aro being a bonytongue, like the Arapaima, does not make them equal.

So, if they in fact, come up for air, that is tottally irrelevant in terms oftheir breathing abilities/necessities.
 
thanks for verifying, i think coming up for air is a way for normal water breathing fish to enjoy the oxygen transfer that is occurring on the surface layer with the atmosphere.
This could be just to suck water past the gills.
not neccesarilly past blood capilliaries in the swim bladder.
not all fish species do it but in forming the question they mentioned the gambusia holibroki (called mosquito fish) and how it can skim the surface for long periods in times of low dissolved oxygen. Its hardly fair that these are considered survival mechanisms that go toward points being accrued for noxiousness. back in the day, in australia, noxious fish caused harms. That is what the term was for... these days they are making a "potentially noxious" list that is not just made up of points accrued because of actual harms to the environment or other species. Once species are placed onto that list it will be forgotten that these are only "potentially" noxious and did not neccesarily show high level of harms.

i guess what happened with the arapaima was that a whole heap of arapaimas died out except for some with bigger than average blood vessels in the swim bladder, and it continued over many generations. arapaimas are bigger and would run a water pool out faster. so in essence, arapaima had a disadvantage that swung back into balance for survival.

the question is of such a broad scope because they use the terms tolerate.
like shoot, are they telling us that fish might just have mechanisms like sucking in surface area to survive?
and any of those that do, are getting more points.

Its no wonder people in the USA have pulled their hair out trying to allow the arows there too.
 
cheers. seeing as it never come up in a science paper or alongside morphology rants it seems like it just gets spread from one web site forum to another. then you see it in things like wiki too.

i sent off a question to the specialist dr brauner just to get proof. thing was they compared arapamia to africans i think. different environments make for different evolutions.
most home arows would have air in the water so mightnt need or wouldnt show that behaviour. i have never seen a pond of arows go through an oxygen crash to say if they gulp at surface exchange layer.
 
All osteoligids are air breathing but not even my bichirs come up every ten minutes more like every hour or hour and a half stick an arowana in an air tight jar it'll die of asypication sp
 
ok bichars are noted for air breathing but arows will die in low oxy levels. they mustnt be very air breathers much to save their butts. but if you stuck it in an air tight jar then dissolved oxygen and atmospheric oxy would be used up too. thanks for input.
did you take a video of the fish dying in a air tight jar?
 
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