justonemoretank;3610090; said:
The OP is a beginner, so this makes sense.
I'm going to suggest something here -- unless we have something that's actually new to add, we refrain from telling the OP the same things over and over. It's not going to help the situation. Just a suggestion!
Alright....make sure not to feed live fish to your arowanas as they carry diseases/parasites. my jardini arowana has black spots disease from eating live minnows....there is nothing on the market that can cure black spots disease. my fish won't die but it won't go away for who knows how long...a year or more!!??...since your tank is small...you should only have one fish in it. take the other two back or try to sell them to someone who knows a great deal about arowanas.
once everything is right with your water chemistry...you should then change the water at least once a week..doing a 25% water change. so 25% of your 40 gallon would be: 10 gallons. it's best to treat the water with chlorine remover in a bucket then pour it into your tank. pouring water into your tank then treating it is not effective and it can mess your fish up, especially if the water is too cold or too hot. The chlorine and heavy metals in your tap water can also tear your fishes fins and tails up, so be careful. i recommend using water that is close to your fish tank's temperature.(78 degrees F)
You will need a Much larger tank soon....something like a 125 gallon may even be too small for your fish. there are a lot of illness and diseases that can develop when you don't know how to take care of your fish or when it is stuck in a small tank. such disease/illness can be Holes in the head disease, also known as: head and lateral line erosion. what happens is hole will appear on your fishes head and lateral line. your not going to notice it at first unless you ALWAYS look at your fish every day. it is not sure as to how HITH forms but I think it deals a lot with stress and poor water quality. some people say its a parasite that causes it...but others think that the carbon in the filter bags can also cause it. and of course, there are more theories.
The biggest one of all, especially for silver arowanas is droop eye, this is when your fish's eyes always look down rather than straight or up. You can not fix it. there are a lot of theories as to how arowanas get it, such as...feeding foods that are too fatty, feeding goldfish or other feeders, not feeding your fish from the surface. But i'm not sure as to which theory is 100% correct. but the best thing to do is to feed your arowana from the surface and don't feed fatty things to it. forzen foods such as shrimp is the way to go. A guy I know feeds turkey hot dogs to his silver!!...poor fish, it has massive droop eye!.
If you keep your fish in that tank for a very long period of time, it is highly likely that it will develop bent tail/spin syndrome. i believe that the cause is of course the lack of space for the fish! arowans get really long so a wide tank is a great idea. another common situation can be fin rot. from my experience, it can happen from a bad diet (too many meal worms, crickets) and not changing the water enough. Be careful with arowans and fin rot as the fish will never be as healthy and beautiful as when you first got it. such things as the two barbels on the fish's mouth and the two long appendages on the pelvic fin will not grow back completely. I have yet to see a 24" silver or black arowana that is COMPLETELY FLAWLESS.
You will really need a great filtration system. canister filters such as the FX5 is great on large tanks. the xp3s are also good on medium to larger tanks. if you are ever to clean your filter, DO NOT clean the whole thing like you did your tank. clean the filter itself with tank water and for the sponges/filter-bags that trap particles - depending on what you have...change only one bag at a time if you have two power filters. for a canister, only clean one sponge once at a time. so that mean that this month you clean the top or bottom sponge and then the next month you clean the layer above or below it. The brown nasty looking things that you see on the sponge is the things that are responsible for breaking down ammonia(NH3) to nitrite(NO2-) and then to the less harmful nitrate(NO3-). without this constant process and without water changes, your fish will always be breathing and eating it's own wastes. if you have other filter media in your filter, such as a bag of rocks or wheels that spins, make sure to not clean those as they also house beneficial bacteria in/on them.
Arowanas are very majestic and if you take great care of them fully...you will be a very satisfied person in the end.
did you plan anything here?
