Arowanas will jump so cover up well!

Hi all,
Thanks for your overwhelming support for this new part of the blog which I have set up for you to share stories for everyone to learn from.
NB: IF YOU HAVE PERSONAL EXPERIENCES THAT YOU WANT TO SHARE, PLEASE SEND ME AN EMAIL WITH THE DETAILS SO THAT I CAN SHARE WITH EVERYONE AS A SEPARATE POST. (PLEASE DO NOT POST IT IN THE COMMENTS AREA BELOW EVERY POST AS READERS WILL MISS IT IF THEY ARE NOT READING THE COMMENTS.) THANKS!

Without further ado, here is the first one from readers… This is the email I received and is posted verbatim to you.

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Hi, I just thought I’d share my recent tragedy with you and perhaps you can pass it on to our extended Arowana lovers family.

I recently did a 25 percent water change on my 140 gallon Tank that housed my 26 inch 7 year old silver Arowana. After the change, I noticed he was acting very nervously. He was jumping and smashing into the glass. When I tested the water, I noticed the salt was much higher than I normally have it. 0.40%. It is usually between 0.15 and 0.20. I don’t know if this is the reason for his behavior (perhaps you could theorize…). The next day, I changed 20%, and the day after another 20%. Incidentally, he seemed to calm down allot. The following night after returning home, we noticed he was not in the tank. He had managed to knock a weighted piece of glass off of the tank and strand himself on the back edge of the glass. I don’t know how long he was out for, but he was still breathing when I put him back in, but his equilibrium was gone, and he died late that night. We feel as if we lost a member of our family. He will be missed, his name was Sparkles.

Thank you,

John Doe (All anonymous will be John Doe ok. )

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My observations and recommendations :

1) I will also add some salt into my tank with every change of water. Many people have asked me how much salt to put. To be frank, I really don’t measure but to give you a gauge, I have a 5x2x2 feet tank and I usually add about maybe 150gms of salt in it. (Why I know is because I buy 1kg bags of salt..) I will also add some black water in it.. How much? It does not really matter because in my experience, this is harmless. (Ok I do have one reader who wrote me another post who stated otherwise but I will share that in another post to you. That reader does have a point because by process of elimination, it does sound like it was the cause but anyway… will share later … suspense! suspense! )

2) John did the right thing by changing water. As I have mentioned many times, if your fish is acting strangely for no apparent reason, this should always be your first cause of action!

3) Cover your tanks properly. Arowanas will JUMP! It is in their nature ok! A few readers asked me in the past about how to train their arowanas to NOT jump! This can’t be done and we will have to live with it. In the wild, arowanas jump up from the water to catch small preys like birds! If you do not cover your tanks properly, there is a high chance that they will knock the cover off and you will have an arowana who thinks that it can breathe air and fly! (Sorry no pun intended but just trying to drive the point across!)

In John’s case, we won’t really know what caused it to jump but the most probably cause is an insect or something on the top cover. My previous arowana (which is at the farm now) has bruised it’s mouth many time trying to catch insects that landed on the top glass cover. In my arowana care book, I narrated a story about a close personal friend of mine who was ONLY third time lucky because his first 2 red asian arowanas jumped out of the tank. The third time, he put bricks on top of the glass cover. A bit extreme but it worked!

How heavy must the top cover be? This is really subjective. What I have are pieces of glass on top of my tank and two 5 foot lights sitting on it. This should be sufficient..

Ok hope you learn something from this. Let me know your thoughts below. Cheers!

Steven