Arowana Care For All The Passionate Hobbyist...

Hiya hobbyist,
Thought I’d go into a topic today that’s not featured much anywhere. I’ve actually had many hobbyist asking me what is the best way to move their arowanas to another tank/place because of reasons like moving house, changing to a larger tank, feng shui advise, etc… I thought explaining in words would be a real challenge so guess what??? I had to move my tank for real …. so I thought I’d share how I did it….WITH PHOTOS OFCOURSE!!! Like I always say, a picture speaks a thousand words.

What happened was my wife wanted me to move my tank to another location in our house and of course I could not just lift it up and carry it right.. I could have said no to my wife but thought better as she would probably nag me until I did it anyway. Sigh! So anyway, I decided to do it ASAP. As I did not have a spare tank in my house, I decided to move my 5 crossbacks to the farm so that I could drain the tank and move it to the new location.

I’ll be frank here… There are not really any hard and fast rules as to how to move your arowana to a new tank/location. But what I’ll be describing below will definitely give you an idea on how it’s done if you ever needed to do it yourself.

HOWEVER here is my advise ok… if you have just one arowana, then I think you can probably do it yourself but if you have more than one, maybe it would be better to get some professional help to move them. You really do not want to stress out your arowanas unnecessarily. Trust me on this!

So anyway, let’s get started with the move ok… ENJOY!!!

1) The below are probably the only equipment that you would need to do the job. A styrofam box, STRONG plastic bags and fish stabilizer. The fish stabilizer is to make your arowana a bit drowsy so that it would become ‘calmer’ and not struggle too much when you try to guide it into the plastic bag.

2) Example of a fish stabilizer …

3) Ok before you start, it would make sense to drain a bit of water from the tank. This is in case your arowana becomes a bit excited and jumpy… You don’t want it to accidentally jump out of the tank while you are trying to move it do you?

4) After draining some water, put a bit of the fish stabilizer into the tank to calm the fish down. Be mindful that this is potent stuff ok.. so use sparingly… Read the instructions on the bottle.

5) Put the plastic bag into the water and guide the arowana into the bag. Do not try and force the arowana into the bag as this can cause it to become very agitated and jump around and injure itself.

6) Before you tie up the plastic bag for transport, do put in a drop of the fish stabilizer to calm it down for the transport to another location. (Only needed if the distance is far enough and in this case is to the farm.)

7) Putting the arowanas into the tank in the farm. What you should do is put the entire bag into the water first for about 30mins. After which, open the bag and slowly mix the tank water with the bag water before slowly releasing the arowana into the tank.

Ok hope you enjoyed the above ‘move’. Do share if you have any other methods. Oh by the way, some people also oxygenate the bags before they tie up the bag for transport but I think it might not be needed if the distance is short. Like I said… no hard and fast rules to follow but some people do take additional steps… Cheers and take care…