how can you minimize drop eye???

[alexx-w]

i think my arow is starting to get one eye lower then the other...

am i doing something wrong?

he is about 8 inches in a 125, with 2 angel fish in there with him.

im planning on upgrading.


he is eating very very good and looks very healthy, the tank is very open and he has a lot of room at his size in my tank right now. the only thing is that his right eye seems to be drooping a little, and i love my arow i would like to do enything i can to help him

any tips?

 

[scriving]

nobody knows what causes drop eye so nobody is going to be able to answer this question 100% but you could always do surgery on your fish after he has drop eye

 

[tigrey]

i would say the best tip is DONT WORRY ABOUT IT! DE is normal, they get it even in the wild. my silver has DE but it doesnt bother me because hes a beast!

 

[Cliff.W.]

i think my arow is starting to get one eye lower then the other...

am i doing something wrong?

he is about 8 inches in a 125, with 2 angel fish in there with him.

im planning on upgrading.


he is eating very very good and looks very healthy, the tank is very open and he has a lot of room at his size in my tank right now. the only thing is that his right eye seems to be drooping a little, and i love my arow i would like to do enything i can to help him

any tips?

I've read a lot about DE as well and have come across a lot of things that people do to prevent DE but I have no idea if these things work or not cause no one really does know 100% what causes DE. I have read People adding substrates to prevent aro's from looking down at reflections. Adding ping pong balls in the tank to make aro's look up. Some people even added flashing LED lights on tank corners just to have aro look up. There is also the method of operating on the Aro cutting off the fat tissues from the eyes but thats kind of extreme to me.

 

[sbuse]

the BEST way to prevent DE is to line your tank with pillows...then it will have a soft thing to crash its head into...

 

[SpeshulEd]

the BEST way to prevent DE is to line your tank with pillows...then it will have a soft thing to crash its head into...

Hehe, I think sbuse might be right. I noticed my silver getting DE after slamming into the top.

You could always lower your water level 6" (or more) from the top of your tank. I've also heard of someone wrapping the glass tops of their tank with bubble wrap.

 

[Gshock]

Hehe, I think sbuse might be right. I noticed my silver getting DE after slamming into the top.

You could always lower your water level 6" (or more) from the top of your tank. I've also heard of someone wrapping the glass tops of their tank with bubble wrap.

What is that actually meant to do anyways?

 

[H]-[H]

I have read People adding substrates to prevent aro's from looking down at reflections.

Just thought I'd bring this up..

A very common deformity that is striking more and more Silver Arowanas kept in captivity today is drop eye, a condition where the eye(s) constantly look down. It is of great debate of what actually causes this conditioned, but a few of the theory can be ruled out or severely questioned, such as a fatty diet. A majority of owners have raised there fish on a low fat diet and consequently
they still acquire it. The genetics theory has flaws of its own, Some hobbyist claim that it’s the captive bred silvers that acquire the drop eye due to inbreeding causing a weak gene pool, but how can this be when the majority of the country’s silvers are coming out of wild from south America? According to some (consider them semi-unreliable sources) that it is the captive bred silver arowana that are less prone to drop eye, if this is in fact true then is inbreeding really responsible for causing weak genes in fish in general or is it the wild strains of fish that are less hardy than there captive bred counterparts??? .

Getting back on topic, some say that reflection from the bottom of the tank causes the fish to look down.To answer this I did a lil investigation. and this is done on an acrylic tank bottom, not a glass one but I think the result on the glass would be the same. (feel free to question this experiment)

See the reflections??? That’s from our point of view..



Now I took some saran wrap, wrapped up my carema in it, tied it off and made it water proof. The second time, well……..now my camera is drying in front of a fan..lol.. Lets take a look under water from a fishes point of view (I zoomed out as far as I could, the figure at the top of the pic is my aros head)


its the wooden bottom, but Wheres the reflection????? If theres is no reflection then what are they looking down at/for??? You might be thinking that the fish would probably be looking down at the tankmates swimming at the bottom level of the tank, but wait…….. what if the arowana has no tankmates???...and theres No reflection????Then what the heck would the fish looking down for???? Until science (or some hobbiyst with a pay load of cash) steps up, the true cause(s) may remain unknown leaving us to dwell on theorys.

Adding ping pong balls in the tank to make aro's look up.

Brian brought up some good points as well..

The ping pong ball will work for about 8 seconds. Once the aro discovers that it is not food, likely it will pay no attention to it from that point on. Worse scenario is that the arowana eats the ping pong ball and dies.

 

[SpeshulEd]

What is that actually meant to do anyways?

Lower water level = more distance to the top of the tank where they could bang their head. I guess they can launch themselves farther than 6"...I was just throwing that out there.

It just seems like a tank that was 1/2 full or 3/4 full would mean more distance to avoid the top when they jumped.

Am I off base here?

 

[Gshock]

Lower water level = more distance to the top of the tank where they could bang their head. I guess they can launch themselves farther than 6"...I was just throwing that out there.

It just seems like a tank that was 1/2 full or 3/4 full would mean more distance to avoid the top when they jumped.

Am I off base here?

Nope, but you'd need to clear atleast 2-3 feet of water for this to actually work. Not something most of us can actually do.