December 31, 2006
My friend's 4 year old red arowana just died last week…
Hi all,
I had a very very sad friend today (just met him at a friend's wedding hours ago). His 4 year old 'baby' died suddenly… did I also mentioned violently? He had just come back from holidays more than a week ago. A day later, he changed his tank's water and a few hours after that, he heard 3 loud thuds. His arowana hit it's head HARD against the wall twice and the final one against the lid above. He nearly freaked out as it has never acted so irrational before. After this final thud, his arowana just started floating upside down and eventually died! I found this so unbelievable!
During dinner today, we tried to trace back the steps to see what could have caused this. These are the facts..
1) He was away for 6 days and no one was home to feed his arowana all that time.
2) His fish was apparently ok when he came back. It even ate some food that day.
3) He changed the water on that day.
I could only think of two things that could have caused the demise of his arowana… i) is the food and ii) the water he changed. If it was the
i) Food - then this would probably be contaminated food.. Make sure that the food is kept fresh in the fridge if they are not live food.
ii) Water - He might have changed too much water.
I think the water explanation sounds more plausible as he mentioned that the food was definitely fresh. Well we will never know for sure now what killed his arowana but keep in mind that changing too much water at any one time can kill your arowana, let alone any aquarium fish as the chemicals in tap water like chlorine, etc.. is deadly to your fish..
Food for thought….
Filed under Arowana Care Tips by Steven
Comments on My friend's 4 year old red arowana just died last week… »
Sorry to hear abt your frens arowana death.. My super red/rtg/xback died of the same way too (how unlucky of me rite) …i suspect the cause of their death is due to the excessive amt of chlorine in the water…at certain days…PUB add chlorine into the tank..at that day..the amt of chlorine will be higher than usual..having too much chlorine will actually suffocate the fish as it cant breathe well through its gills…
now..i have an rtg and hope to keep another red soon…
regards,
zack
Zack,
Sorry to hear that.. Guess this is the reason why no one should change too much of the water at any one time. This point is so important but most people do not realize the harm… Anyway, we all learn.
Cheers!
Steven
Changing water may did a huge impact of the death of the arowana but y dont u think that its hunger that cause the death of the arowana?I also had a experience of a death of a red arowana because of not giving it food for around 1 week due to overseas.I know ur friend did gave it some food when he come back but 6 days u know…its a lot…Did he gave it enough food when the day he come back .The arowana did had some food but maybe the food given was not enough and 6 days of extreme hunger cause the arowana to hunt for more food to satisfy itself and when then suitation is not there,he may had knock itself out due to tis.As we know that when the fish did not consume some food for around 1 or 2 days they will start knockng itself against the water tank for what i knew for my arowana .Sometimes even when food is given,they will tend to knock against the tank maybe they are still hungry or what.but after a few days of sufficient food the knocking will goes off but for only a hunger of 1 to 2 days.For ur friend 6 days hunger..anything may happen.I am also not sure of the real truth which lead to the death of the arowana but anyway its just a comment.
Darren,
From experience, an adult arowana can go without food much longer. (but ofcourse you would not do this intentionally! :-)) FYI, I only feed my own red arowana every other day. One of the main reasons for it knocking itself against the wall is usually due to stress and the most likely culprit is the water condition.
But like you said, we will never know the actual reason but it is good to be aware of it..
Steven
its so sad to hear that… i just want to share my experience.. i also leave my aro for 4 days just last week bec. of vacation, but before i leave, i gave my aro food though not that many just to have something in his stomack and also i have a water change. when i return i change the water and give him food to eat, so far he is doing well. One thing i find out.. my first green aro, he is alone in the tank, i have him for 6 months, during those time, there were 2 incident that he had a scratch on his scale. While my newly aquired rtg aro, i put a tankmate with him, up to now never has a scratch. maybe sometime aro get lonely too, and when he's lonely unexpected things happen. well… its just my theory.
Aquadude,
Your arowana probably got his 'scratch' from jumping which is VERY NORMAL… They do that all the time and most of the time it is because they see some insects on the lid.. Mine has hurt its mouth and has also lost some scales!.. Read my post on that..
http://arowana-care.com/aroblog/arowana-care-tips/my-arowana-just-lost-some-scales-today
Cheers!
Steven
Hi folks
I had a chilli red, 3yrs and 3 kg of slightly more then 2ft. It died on me on 31 dec 06, but i have since replaced it with a panda red.
These guys are big eather and they gobble. It died the same way as what steve friend explained. i actually fed it with 2 frogs and it ate those in the evening. well…..should be ok right….but i made an error to leave 1 in the tank after 10pm a large one thinking that it would have some 'brain' to devour when it is hungry. A large fish taking 2-3 frog is normal. then at 2am….it start to go 'amok' . it splash water so much that i woke up. it knock on tanks before and i did not think too much, but this time it managed to slide thru a thin opening in the glass top and fall over and outside….imagine a 3kg from a 5ft height. then i saw that it threw out a dead frog…so i conclude that it was trying to 'dechoke' or a large object from its throat. It is not the water if you matain 20 - 30% or even 35% water change, regardless of the chlorine. ehhh….of course you cant miss out the anti-chlorine.
Within 2 mins, i got it back but i believe it had internal injuries because it died 13hrs later…at 3pm next day. I think …the owner may have overfed, thinking that he did not eat for a long time and nothing is enough a slong as he can eat it.
Jack,
Another interesting observation and a possibility as well. But in this case, I doubt it as the pieces of prawns were quite small but thanks for sharing.
I agree with you however in that you should never feed it a piece of food which is bigger that what it can shallow or else it can choke like in your case.
Thanks for sharing..
Steven