Big Question

[bboykoi]

Do arowanas shrink?
i recently bought a 27" arowana and it looks like it shrank
or is it just me?
i put it in a 150 gallon tank and it looks a little smaller than when i bought it.

so can anyone answer my question?

 

[benzjamin13]

Tanks at lfs are small which makes the fish seem bigger than what they really are. If you bought a 27" Aro, it was probably in a tank smaller than a 150g. I remember trading in some fish and I didn't think my fish were THAT big, I traded in a 9" Oscar, 8" Jag, and 7" JD and all of them didn't look big in my 75g, but when the lfs put them in their tanks, they looked huge.

 

[Eleven Bravo]

glass reflection, just a totally different tank setup, ie substrate, lighting, and acrylic, vs glass. i have acrylic so it magnifies the size.

 

[Bderick67]

As said above, I think it also has to do with items you are visually familiar with. There have been a few times I've bouht fish thinking they were bigger then fish I already had, only to find out they were the same size or smaller.

 

[12 Volt Man]

Tanks at lfs are small which makes the fish seem bigger than what they really are. If you bought a 27" Aro, it was probably in a tank smaller than a 150g. I remember trading in some fish and I didn't think my fish were THAT big, I traded in a 9" Oscar, 8" Jag, and 7" JD and all of them didn't look big in my 75g, but when the lfs put them in their tanks, they looked huge.

where I used to work at a big LFS we had to put an Aro that came in that was over 2 feet long in a tank that was 60x18 footprint.

we had to because the '15 inch" arow that the customer was going to bring in was more like 25 inches long on arrival...

 

[pwmin]

it's not from being skinny due to lack of eating, i'm assuming