Need help! Our silver arowana is vertical

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WolfetteB

Feeder Fish
Jul 22, 2011
3
0
0
USA
It didn't start up until a couple days ago, but it's gotten progressively worse - we've had this fish for about a month now, and it's ~6" long. It's been sitting at the bottom of the tank, or it was until it was more or less standing vertically on its tail. It wasn't moving around much, hasn't been eating much, and seems to have gotten a little gray/milky. It also seems to be curling its tail around a lot, which I'm not sure is normal. We have it in a 30-40 gallon tank with a like-sized pleco, and a smaller spotted catfish.

It seemed to be fine until we went camping for a couple of days, and threw in maybe twenty neon tetra looking baby fish for it to snack on while we were gone. There are two left. (It also eats fish flakes, and occasionally freeze dried krill) Any ideas on what the problem is, and what we can do to help it?
 
A lot of problems here, first and foremost...a 30-40 gallon is WAY too small to even THINK about putting a 6" aro in. They grow very fast and need a lot of space to swim around (they are pretty active fish). You also have two other fish in there that are too big for that tank. You could have severe water quality issues. Also, the "neon terra looking fish", were they guppys? Pet store feeder fish commonly have all kinds of diseases and parasites.
 
From what I've read in other Arowana health issue threads, once they are vertical on their tail it's an extremely bad sign and their usually not very far off from dying. :(
 
Thank you for the info; it seemed to be doing alright and swimming around quite a bit before, but we're definitely going to look for a bigger tank. We did change 1/4 of the water in the tank, and add a little bit of salt and are going to see what happens. They were guppies, and I've read that a lot. We were thinking about that, too, and won't be trying those again if it survives.
 
A properly cared for silver aro will get over 30" long and need be kept in at least a 96x30x24" 300g tank.

How long has your 40g tank been set up?
 
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