Arowana in Planted Tank

[paranoid]

Hi,

Need some advice for arowanas in planted tank. My friend interested to change his arowana tank to a planted tank. Can all types of arowanas be kept in a planted tank or just a few limited species? It's a gold arowana abt 0.4m length. Is it advisable in the first place?

Thanks!

[vinz]

Should be all types... however I think you'll be hard pressed to accomodate an araipama in a planted tank.

What is the size of the tank? I wouldn't advice converting the tank to planted for an arowana if it's not at least 5ft long and at least 2ft tall and wide. The plants will take up a lot of the space that an arowana would require.

For that size/age, I'm concern how the arowana would feel about hands and arms invading its tank for maintainance on a regular basis. It depends on the personality of the fish, whether its "zai" (calm and confident) or panicky, and whether the cleaning of its current tank involves arms and hands entering the tank (some ppl use magnet glass cleaners and grabbers/siphons, so seldom put their hands in). Getting bitten is the other concern. Sometimes environment plays a part and a planted tank can be calming as it offers places for the arowana to retreat behind when it feels threatened. If managed properly, the fish should get use to it and will swim about during maintainance.

Second issue is feeding. If the arowana is used to live food, it will take some time and effort to train it to take non-live food like pellets and market prawns. Live feeders like fish, shrimp and frogs can hide in the plants and the arowana will have a very hard time catching them. The live feeder fish might pass diseases to the algae-eating fishes too.

Last issue, your friend needs to consider where to house the fish during the setup of the tank.

Feel free to ask, if you have more questions.

[paranoid]

Vincent,

Thanks for your valuable advice. Seemed like i left out many details which you had kindly pointed out. Suspect its gonna be a tough task to accomodate the relatively huge fish. Presently the existly tank is 1.5ft x 2ft x 5ft, the fish is having difficulty in making a U-turn!

Best Regards