Four (of 6) paroon sharks, rescued from Dayton, OH in Mar 2016

[thebiggerthebetter]

From Jon Gerber's store (along with 8 RTC and 7 pacu).

Took everything out of my Dodge Grand Caravan past the front two seats, all the hardware to expose just bare body. Threw a carpet in there for an underlayment and a rubber liner. Screwed right to the minivan body with metal self-tapping screws. This produced a ~8'x4' "pond" on wheels, at 1' depth that was ~200 gal of water. It was a funny drive, when 200 gallons of water (~1600 lbs) slosh in your minivan it rocks strong left and right and front and back. 30 hours one way...

Paroons were not in a good shape, malnuritioned badly for years, roughed up a bit too. About 1.5'-2' each. There were six. Some went belly up during the trip but amazingly made it and rebounded in 4500 gal. They were figuring out the dominance order for a rather long time and it was violent too. I think this coupled with their great skittishness resulted in losing two of them - first after some months, the second after a year or so. They probably hit their head, sank to the bottom, where anything like that is treated as feed and shew toys by RTCs.

Anyhow,m these 4 have been ok since then. One is clearly the biggest but they have been growing mostly in girth.

 

[Justin David]

love the way you got them home! beauties. nice work!!

 

[J. H.]

Awesome rescue!
Nothing beats a minivan!
If you can partition the pool, and keep the fish in separate, smaller pools, you could put in baffles, which will reduce the sloshing. Some sheets of scrap plywood would work.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Update Sept 27, 2018.

All 4 paroons have been doing well. Grew some but nothing to write home about. The biggest is probably close to 3', another is in between 3' and 2.5', and the last two are ~2.5'.

Mostly peaceful except for an occasional surprising bout of chasing and biting each other. It has lessened tremendously since the beginning year or year and a half but has not disappeared. I attribute this to hierarchy disputes and enforcement. It has lessened enough for all of them to grow back their pretty extensions on all fins.

Also a bit surprisingly, they are yet to take a marine or freshwater frozen fish for me. They only take exclusively pellets. (But see below.) Perhaps this also contributes to slow growth, albeit they don't look thin but rather well fed.

They don't seem to interact with their tank mates. Or so I thought for these 2.5 years since getting them in Mar 2016. Last week, I think I have figured out who killed our 2' striped distichodus aka Distichodus sexfasciatus - post #2 https://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/...atus-1-and-2-in-4500-gal.698700/#post-7874032

It was the paroons and it happened overnight, so I missed it, I could not have witnessed it. I was wondering why pretty much all the scales have been removed from the Distichodus and also while it was nearly dead in the morning, I witnessed paroons biting it and as if trying to fit it in their mouths but quickly realizing they couldn't. But I thought the paroons have done that since the Distichodus was already almost dead, barely moving.

Also when any other fish would fall victim in that 4500 gal, the scales would only be missing from the rear end (e.g., in arowana) or the damage would only be confined to the rear end (e.g., in TSN or achara) as this is the only place easiest and logical to attempt to start swallowing them. So the big Distichodus missing pretty much all the scales didn't make sense.

So, as mentioned, last week, much to my dismay I got lucky and saw the paroons in the morning trying to make a meal out of our smallest pacu named Coral. Coral is an albino red belly and he is anything but edible, being about 2' long and 1.5' tall. The paroons could never fit any significant part of Coral in their mouth, just like they couldn't do that to the Distichodus.

Nevertheless, they were seeking out Coral in the tank and biting it knocking out scales by dozens. They were doing so relentlessly. I imagine that's exactly how they descaled the Distichodus overnight and it perished from all the stress by mid morning. Coral would too if I didn't feed the jackals.

It turns out that not feeding the paroons Sun, Mon, and Tues (I only offered pellets on Wed, Thurs, Friday, and Sat in that tank) meant they grew hungry and eventually started taking matters into their own fins.

That's my lesson.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Update.

They keep growing on pellets. Treat fish offered as feed the same as rocks. When they get hungry they still bother Coral the pacu, so I know to feed them more.

Short crappy clip:

This was in Apr 2016, one month after I got them from Gerber's, still all six:

 

[Fishman Dave]

Beauties. Love them but I just don't trust them. When I lost mine he was just around 2ft mark and I don't think he had stopped moving from the day I bought him at 4" . His mouth must have been 8" wide and his head 7.5" that's how little I trusted him! His mouth just seemed the biggest thing about him. Strange you mention the pellets though, all mine would eat was sinking sturgeon pelletts high in fibre.

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Half a year update. One paroon was adopted by Rod and Lisa of Predatory Fins, Boca Raton, FL. Nothing else really to add of essence. A short clip of the three remaining ones. The water was largely drained from the 4500 gal and I am catching the fish for Rod:

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Yearly update.

July 2019 Rodrigo adopted one of our paroons, so we are down to three. They have been doing well, growing. Still wouldn't touch thawed fish, only take pellets. Still have little respect for the walls - they are the worst wall bumpers in all of our collection.

In some months if God is willing I will finish our 10,000 gal, 16'x18'x5.5', where they will have more space to swim. They need it.

The biggest one is 3.5'. The two smaller ones are 3' and one of those is the alpha, not the biggest one.

Underwater 8:50 to 9:40 minutes:

5:50-9:30 minutes:

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

Several months ago, one of the smaller two paroons started getting attacked by the other two. It had been tolerable until a couple months ago, when the damage got significant. Luckily, Roderigo of Predatory Fins agreed to adopt / buy the troubled guy, so I drove the paroon in a 500 gal plastic tank to Boca Raton the same day as we agreed with Rod.

So now we are down to two. I am starting to think that the bigger one, at 3.5' is a female and the smaller one at 3' is a male, but these are not substantiated except by the size and general behavior.

Until this spring of 2020, the paroons would never, ever take fish but only took pellets. Ever since I switched to all NLS pellets, I can't provide as much as I could with Ziegler pellets because we went from $1 per pound to $13 per pound. So little by little the paroons were getting hungrier, because pacu and Distichodus outcompete them for pellets, and little by little they started taking thawed herring soaked in VitaChem.

The following is not a good example of it, because of the lights and the paroon's nervous nature but they do grab some fish in this video too:

They still like their pellets too:

 

[thebiggerthebetter]

The farther we go with paroons (only two left), the more problematic they seem to get. This time they decided to attack the Indian shovelnose tankmate. I won't retype the story I told in this video, so unfortunately, one'd need to take a listen and look: