Drop-Eye, current knowledge (2019) ?

jaws7777

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islandguy11

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Do you agree with the author ?
Imo it's a good and informative article -- and most all can agree mechanical injury would likely be the biggest cause of DE -- the question (unanswered in the article), is how much do other factors also act as possible contributors. The author himself alludes to such near the end of the article when mentioning the possibility of fat deposits factoring into the equation.

So for example, a fish with too much lighting, bad diet, too small of a tank or under high stress might be even more susceptible to DE in the event of mechanical injury, whereas a fish without these negative factors might be able to recover more easily from the same event without actually getting DE. Of course how bad or strong the mechanical injury/impact was would also factor in.
 

Malte81

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I saw Videos of a Drop eye surgery where they removed fat deposite behinde the eye.
After that it was fine.
So why should be the main reason a head trauma?
In my opinion too much food and not enough Training/Swimming is the Main Problem.
I See it with my aro.
He always begs for food and even when i only try to feed the other fishes he steals some food from them.
Not so easy to feed him less.
 

boomerk9

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I saw Videos of a Drop eye surgery where they removed fat deposite behinde the eye.
After that it was fine.
So why should be the main reason a head trauma?
In my opinion too much food and not enough Training/Swimming is the Main Problem.
I See it with my aro.
He always begs for food and even when i only try to feed the other fishes he steals some food from them.
Not so easy to feed him less.
From the article that I've shared, they have seen several fishes with drop eye in the wild.
Also they have seen fishes get drop eye right after head trauma.
 
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Malte81

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I am not saying they cannot get a drop eye because of a head Trauma.
But i dont think this is the main reason for dropeye.
I think its mostly from a fat deposit behind the eye.
I think we will never no for sure what is the main reason for drop eye.
 
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islandguy11

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Must be the skull structure of bonytongue fishes, both arowana and arapaima get drop eye, but it is never seen in other large predators like gars, channa, pike or peacock bass.
I am not saying they cannot get a drop eye because of a head Trauma.
But i dont think this is the main reason for dropeye.
I think its mostly from a fat deposit behind the eye.
I think we will never no for sure what is the main reason for drop eye.
You both make valid points -- and in fact the 2 issues might be inter-related: as boomerk9 suggests Aro skull structure might make them more susceptible to drop eye, and then fatty deposits (overfeeding) might increase the chances significantly.

Of course it raises the question if an Aro has never had any head trauma, can it still get DE from feeding too much? But this is hard to test -- I think it would be nigh on impossible to find an Aro in a tank that has never jumped and hit the lid at least a couple of times.

My Blue Base jumped out of her tank when she was about 10" and landed on a hard tile floor 5 feet down (and then tried 'swimming' away). Luckily she survived with only a few lost scales -- but who knows if this could cause some DE issue way later down the road...establishing cause/effect in this hobby can sometimes be frustratingly difficult as we all know.
 

islandguy11

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This just popped up on my FB timeline yesterday -- a quite beautiful Blue Based Xback from a famous Arowana farm. Interesting to note that despite living in a nice sized breeding pond it has DE. Of course we can't know the reason, it might have had some head trauma during its life or could have been some other factor.

1381657
 
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headbanger_jib

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Here's a little update 24k now doesn't have DE or upward tilted eye, both it's eyes look normal now.

Will try and get a video this Sunday
 
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