Just a warning.

If you keep Arowana, make sure you have a lid, and if it's not heavy weigh it down with some bricks or something else heavy, I just happened to have bricks.

For Blinky's (the one eyed silver aro) tank, we have the plastic lids that came with it, with the lights sitting on top. We normally keep a brick (a regular old 2"x8" red brick) on top of the flap lid, and another on the other side of the light just in case.

Yesterday as we were feeding him, one of the kids tripped and got cut on trash can near by. In the following near death experience that only a small child can manage with a tiny barely bleeding cut, I forgot to put the brick back on the lid flap part.

Band-aids were applied, dinner was ready, good food and times were had. Four hours later on that evening after the kids went to bed, I went back to his tank to find the lid open and no Aro. A frantic hunt immediately took place, to find him still alive, but had launched himself near 14 feet from his tank.

As an aside, I'm not sure if it would have been better for him on not (definitely not the goldfish) but he overshot the goldfish pond by a foot. I wonder if that was his target.

I quick scooped him up off the floor, and put him back in his tank, fearing the worst, since he didn't thrash of flail once picking him up. In the tank he was laying on his side, kinda floating sorta not. I gently brushed off the bits of crud that were stuck to him and he went from laying on his side to laying vertically tail touching the bottom, head facing towards the surface.

His gills were still going but I had assumed death was near imminent. Then the best I can describe it is like what happens when they show those people on tv shows that survive drowning. He thrashed some, then gagged a few air bubbles out and started feebly swimming around the tank some. I completely left him alone figuring any further intervention would just stress him out more, and as of this morning you wouldn't even know anything had happened besides the bruise on the lip where he busted through the lid flap.

*whew*

The moral of the story is make sure you lid is heavy, Aro's are stronger than you think.

Yep and good advise....Glad to hear the Aro is alright. I used to keep Piranha and they would jump tank all the time even with glass lids on the tank. Never had any deaths but those big bastards would jump out at least every couple weeks or so.

Yea. I'm amazed and very glad he survived. I'd have been pretty bummed if he died.

Yes Aros like to jump when scared. KEEP IT COVERED

Woah that was a close one! I didnt know they could jump that far.

I imagine there was some flopping around involved as well. He had bits o' crud from the carpet stuck on him too.

Wow! Glad to hear he is OK.

I forgot to say hope he's ok.

saint_felony wrote:

I imagine there was some flopping around involved as well. He had bits o' crud from the carpet stuck on him too.

Well at least now you know it is time to vac the carpet so if he ever jumps again he wont be all crudy...lol, jk.

Mostlycichlids wrote:

saint_felony wrote:

I imagine there was some flopping around involved as well. He had bits o' crud from the carpet stuck on him too.

Well at least now you know it is time to vac the carpet so if he ever jumps again he wont be all crudy...lol, jk.

Mostlycichlids wrote:

Well at least now you know it is time to vac the carpet so if he ever jumps again he wont be all crudy...lol, jk.

I figure next time I'll just have the cat lick him off first. Saves me the trouble of vacuuming.

saint_felony wrote:

Mostlycichlids wrote:

Well at least now you know it is time to vac the carpet so if he ever jumps again he wont be all crudy...lol, jk.

I figure next time I'll just have the cat lick him off first. Saves me the trouble of vacuuming.

LOL

saint_felony wrote:

Mostlycichlids wrote:

Well at least now you know it is time to vac the carpet so if he ever jumps again he wont be all crudy...lol, jk.

I figure next time I'll just have the cat lick him off first. Saves me the trouble of vacuuming.

lol...I can see the cat now..."Lick, lick, lick, chomp!"

BUMP......
I think he was aiming for the pond, I guess he overshot it?

Got me, I have no idea how good their eyesight is.

And the fact Blinky has a screwy eye and drop eye, how did he know that the pond had food?*cough*blame the kids*cough*

Missing an eye, drop eye in the other. Got into a good argument with something before he ended up here.

saint_felony wrote:

Got me, I have no idea how good their eyesight is.

Aros have excellent eyesight. They'll nab birds, small mammals and other tasty treats off of branches several feet above the water. Now Blinky himself, well that's another story...

WYite

I knew they could nail things out of the water, but I always thought it was a motion thing more than an ability to identify tasty treats vs not tasty treats.

Senior One Eye, attacks plants, pellets, shrimp, or anything else that goes into the top of the tank in a check to make sure it's food. So long as it's moving, either floating or if I move it.

I had some extra water lettuce from outside that I put in with him. When I put it in slowly, he didn't care about it and left it alone. If I pushed it around some, to get it out of the way he'd try and eat it. Same with when I feed him by hand, if I keep very still he has no idea what's going on, but if I move some, he goes right to where I'm at.

Wonder how your breeding project is goin?

I can't remember if I posted about that here or talked about it in chat.

They went, out the door that is. I had 5, I grew them out to about 6 to 8 or so inches, when the local non-sucky fish store dropped off an Eastern boxie for us to tend too.

Considering what I paid for 'em he made me a deal I couldn't refuse. All 5 of them would have gone actually, but one has drop eye on the one side already, (I think from jumping into the top of the tank) So he ended up staying here.

I'm hoping to try this again in the spring when the babies are in, but I need to get a bigger home situated for the Pacu that are here. They're growing quicker than I expected them too and are getting close to outgrowing the pond they're in. Tempting to see if I can build something where the pacu and a few sliders could peacefully coexist.

I've seen the horrors of what an 18in Aro can do to a turtle (Diamond Back in this case and not here when it happened) so maybe not.

Dang, well, try again and send some down south for free?

We talked 'bout that in chat, saint, but don't recall ya ever mentioning what the aro did to the terrapin.

WYite

Huh. I could have sworn I told you about that one Wyite.

Anyway, there's a fish/pond store near my mom's place but the owner only really knows about koi/goldies/ponds so the few times I was in there I saw some interesting combos. (That's the place where I saw the Skirt Tetras being kept with the 5 inch Sevs)

They got a big display tank (at least 400 or 500g if not bigger), and one of the kids that works at the store, goes to the school my mom works at. He's like 15 or 16 but from what my mom says, he's really good with SA stuff.

Since they already had a fancy goldy tank they told him he could stock that one. The showpiece he picked for the tank was a 18 inch Silver Aro. There were a few other fish, a couple of beefy non aro snack sized cichlids, some silver dollars and a big honkin L numbered Pleco that a customer brought in. From what I was told the tank was running great.

This spring, one of the other girls that worked there somehow ended up with two adult DBTs. The kid knew about what I do from my mom, (thanks to them talking about the Aro) so he was going to get her to call me about picking them up.

In the meantime.. (cue ominous music) the shop owner (while the kid wasn't there) knew that they were aquatic turtles, so he thought he'd better put them in a tank. They didn't have a cycled empty tank, and all the tropical tanks were filled with small and tasty fishies.

You all see where this is going, yes?

He put the two DBTs in the tank with the Aro. The logic being the Aro was too big for the turtles to rough up, and that the turtles are well, turtles and they'd be fine with the Aro.

The next day, there was a very nasty surprise. The kid told me that the girl who opened the store actually threw up.

The left front leg of the smaller of the two dbts was removed from the middle of the leg down and was no longer in the tank, near the filter in the filter or anywhere else for that matter. They said there wasn't any little bits either, like if the cichlids worked on it some. The bite and the breakage looked to be one chomp too so everyone was fairly sure we knew who it was.

The plus side of it was the owner felt absolutely horrible about it, paid for all the surgery and rehab, and set it up in it's own special tank in the store as a lesson to not researching compatible tank mates.

The bad part was, that I tend to name things based on their ailments, so he inherited the name tripod.

Nah, ya hadn't told me that one. Tripod, eh? At least he's gonna be okay and have a long, pampered life from here.

And when I first joined here and showed an interest in turtles, you seemed perplexed why I was more concerned with the turtles well-being than the fish's. Well, now ya know, that's the kinda fish I like.

Turtle-fin soup, anyone?

WYite