Silver Arowana

[Aiglos]

Hello All!  

Good news on the homefront,  Was at Superpet Kanata yesterday and found my long searched for affordable arowana.  37$, I'm pretty happy,  was tripple bagged and boxed and put in a cooler for its trip back to petawawa, it made it fine and is settling in nice in his quarentine tank.  

My plans are to put him in my 125 Gallon tank with my oscar,  now this might take some time before he is ready to go into this tank.  What experiance does anyone have with arowanas ?  

The associate at superpet said he was eating flake foods, however maybe its just because of the shock but he will not take any food right now.  I have tried Floating cichlid sticks and pellets, shrimp pellets, and floating flake food to no avail.   Today I will run to the local fish store and pick up some crickets.   I am lawing down the law early about no feeders,  I dont want any unwanted diseases in my tanks, nor do I want a fish that knows he can eat other fish, as he will be housed with silver dollars aswell, so I hope he will take the crickets till I can wein him onto floating cichlid sticks.  

He is a cute little guy, about 2 1/2 inches.  I am happy, the previos arowana I was going to buy was at Incredible Aquariums in London for 100$ however he was pretty banged/cut up and he had a little red on his gills that I did not like,  plus I want to experiance the growth of this wonderful fish.  

The real beuty of this is great. The fish isnt even for me,  my Girlfriend was the one that wanted it, I told her that we would probally need to upgrade to a wider tank and she said that she would like that,   What a great day eh ?

[squeeker]

Glad you picked him up!  He was starting to look a little lonely!

He was, indeed, eating flake... also bloodworms and brine shrimp.  I fed him crickets the other day, and he ate them too.

Enjoy your new pet!  They are impressive when they get bigger!

[Aiglos]

Hopefully its just a case of new tank enviroment.   Thanks for the re-assurence that he will take flake food,  from my research ive done on them, the hardest part sometimes is getting them off live food.  

I can't wait till he is larger,  Living Fossils, they are gorgeous fish.

[hummer]

thats awesome, they're beautiful fish and i wish i had a tank to house a fish like that

[Nelson]

BA east has two, about 4+ inches.

[Toss]

My wife used to have a red one (I believe it was from Borneo) back home. It grew to 2' long before it broke the lid and jump out. She  fed him live insect, crickets, grasshoopers, centipedes, house geckos, small lizards and some feeder fish (bigger ones). This fish need to be fed a lot of live insects to get the colour up. I would love to have one of this fish (red or gold) one day. I've seen a few good ones in Toronto $100-$200 range for 3" long.

[Aiglos]

I would have loved to get a red or jardini arowana but they are very rare and hard to find, plus they are alot of money.

Im getting worried about this little silver, he is in a tank by himself and will not eat,  ive tried flakes, crickets, brine shrimp blood worms, cichlid sticks and pellets.....  I am unsure at this point what to do, ive never had a new fish that didnt want to eat.  

I hope he is just having trouble adapting to the new enviroment, I will wait another day, if that doesnt work I'll add a few silver dollars to the tank to get him to see that what im feeding him is infact food.

[Toss]

Look at his belly, if it flush with the rest of his body, he is fine without food for few more days. If it concave or looks like sucked in, you need to worry a bit. This fish don't need to eat everyday. Make sure you clean those uneaten food.

[jdx]

I have a Silver Aro which I raised from 1.5"long, lost the other one, but this one made it, at 1"-2", they are very vulnerable. Mine was transported from Toronto, after 5-6 hours journey, they started to eat dry bloodworm after 20 minutes I put them in my tank. They don't like water movement and are sensitive to water parameters when young, they become much tougher when they reach 7-8". Is your tank water new?

My Aro's staple is market prawn, if you want to train it to eat dry food (pellet, flake and so on) do it when it's young, mine would not touch pellet even after being starved for a month! To avoid other fish stealing his prawn, I now only hang its food above the water and let it jump to for it.

[jdx]

One thing I forgot to mention is that at that size, in the wild, they still stay in school, mainly in their daddy's mouth, so yours may be in deep stress, try to add some gentle dither fish, he may get better.

[Aiglos]

Jdx:  Thanks for the great info.  I broke down and bought some guppies to feed him,  I think he has eaten some as I cannot count as many as I put  in.  

As for new tank, yes it is a new tank, but all the water and filter media came from another tank.  100% of the water and a large handful of ceramic rings from my canister filter, I checked and ammonia/nitrItes are at 0 still, so the water should be good,  I have a filter going with quite alot of current, maybe that is a factor.   He is also in a room where whenever we come in it surprises him, maybe I should black out the tank so he isnt afraid.

Great advice.