Hi all,
Hope everyone well… Been travelling quite a bit these past 2-3 weeks to some very interesting places (Japan, Myanmar and Vietnam.) so have not had time to update everyone on what’s happening. My apologies.
My 5 gold x-backs are doing well. Have very good appetite. Still jittery I must say and fights happening all the time. How I know? I see bruises on their body and scales on the bottom of the tank. But like I said, if you want more than one in the tank.. then you have to live with this!
Anyway, I just wanted to warn everyone about the inherent risk of feeding their arowanas live food. I have been feeding mine quite a bit of feeder fishes like small mollies and goldfishes. I also feed them market prawns when I’m too lazy to buy live food for them.
Anyway I bought a mixture of mollies and goldfishes last weekend. They were in 3 different bags and each bag of feeder fish is S$1.50. I usually check the fishes before I buy them. I want to make sure that they are still active in the bag and not about to die. (sometimes they have been in the small bags for a whole day and the oxygen is low in them.. So please check.) I thought that I picked the 3 ‘best’ bags of feeder fish.
Boy, was I wrong! You can’t really see them well in the bags. Anyway, I took them home and as usual, drained out all the water from the bags and ‘rinse’ the feeder fishes a few times before I put them into my tank. I did not pay much notice to the fishes after that as I was going to start dinner. About 2 hours later, I went to check on my tank and saw some feeder fishes that did not look right. Some of them had white spots/patches and broken fins on them. To me, this raises an alarm bell as I’m sure some of these feeder fishes had fungal growth on them.
What did I do next? This is the part I hated most! I had to take out ALL the infected fishes (about 1/5 of the total feeder fishes) and change a quarter of the tank water. (I had to shower again after that! What a pain!) I could not take the chance of my arowanas being sick because of this! I monitored my 5 babies over the next couple of days… Thank God everything was fine! What’s the best way to know that they are ok? They are still eating well! Nothing beats that behaviour!
Moral of the story ? Always be aware that any live food you bring back for your arowana could have some problems with them. So just be vigilant! If you suspect something is not right… then just take them out immediately! Unfortunately sometimes there are no suretell visible signs but that is a risk like everything we do. I think as long as you are mindful of this, it is ok. What’s life without some excitement right? 
Also a few readers asked me about feeding their arowanas cockroaches. They seem to be plentiful I guess all around us. BUT my advise is, don’t do this! You have no idea whether these roaches have taken any roach poison or have insecticides on their body. This to me, is a risk not worth taking.
Cheerio… Steven
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