David R

I think if there's enough food floating around the smaller ones will be fine. You've seen how I feed my geo tank? Crumble and flake going everywhere, it'll get cleaned up. Just make sure you quarantine them, LFS clowns are pretty much guaranteed to come with whitespot, don't put your large ones at risk.

Actually you may have just dodged a bullet... "If it suddenly begins to hit itself against the walls of its glass aquarium, it is a sign of terrible events. The Arowana, in the worst cases, will spring out of the water and commit suicide, sacrificing its own life to repress negative energy for its owner." www.arowana.co.nz

*drool* !!!!

Gutted!!!!! It happens though, don't give up. At least keep the 3' with the Nandus, you'll be craving fish in 5 minutes if you sell everything!

:lol: Hovmoller how much of a size difference is there between them? The only thing I could suggest is adding more females and rearranging the tank, but finding breeding-sized females could be difficult. I hope thats not a sign of whats coming for my tank!

There's a bit of pecking occasionally, but I haven't actually seen any signs of breeding yet, which surprises me a bit as the larger ones are getting up to the right size. I was hoping to be able to sex them and pick a favourable ratio of M:F to put in the big tank to avoid having to try catch them later on, but I think I'm just going to dump them all in there and see what happens. Do you know what sex the other 4 are? How big are they?

One of my favourite fish, here's a clip of my group; I agree with hovmollers suggestion, a small group of altifrons, group of tetras, and a couple of smaller plecs and/or whiptails and/or corys. Sandy substrate, driftwood, even a bit of leaf litter. 8)

Yeah they would, I'll have to get the recipe off you. Don't worry too much about competition, I've found its usually my clowns out-competing other fish for food!

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=46745&p=508042&hilit=surinamensis#p508042 that first paragraph should give you the general gist of it. I doubt we've ever seen the true surinamensis here, ours are most likely altifrons. As for which variety, some have said "Rio Tapajos", but I think its more likely to be "Pond #4, Kong Ho fish farm Malaysia". Interestingly though, I have 14 of them, 5 purchased recently from HFF as larger specimens that the wholesaler has been holding onto for some time, and the rest are more recent imports. There are some significant differences between the two, I'd love to get some good pics of them and get the experts to look at them, but my camera skills are rather lacking. As for your original question, you could probably keep a pair/trio in that tank hapily, although some would say you need a tank with a bigger footprint. S. leucosticta (aka jurupari) would be a better option for your tank size, and there are plenty of smaller species that would work well if we could get them (eg the red head tapajos). This is a good site for eartheater info; http://eartheaters.qldaf.com/index.php?page=main

I'd love to see some pics of these 30cm clowns with something to show scale. I hate to be a sceptic but every time I've heard someone talk about clowns that size they're usually over-estimating by a good 2". Henward I think the best thing you can do for them is feed them a variety of food [as well as give them space and clean water, which you're already doing]. NLS, shrimp/beefheart, other pellets, even a bit of green stuff. If you're on a mission you might as well go buy another 10-20 small ones and sell them off when they get a bit bigger...

The commentry made the video! hyuk can you believe that!

Wouldn't be the first time I've heard of an ornate picking the eyes out of a small aro. Get some clove oil and put it out of its misery.

You're buying a potentially 3' fish that should be with you for 10+ years and you're not fussed about which type? :-? There are 4 species of arowana allowed into NZ. Osteoglossum ferrari [black] and O. bichirrosum [silver] from the amazon, Scleropages formosus [asian, although some would say it has now been split into several different species], and S. jardini from Australia. Not on the list are S. leichardti from Australia, and Heterotis niloticus from Africa. Rather than being "pretty sure" and just "assuming", how about actually doing some research and posting up FACTS rather than just dribble that you think might be true. All you had to do is put "arowana" into wikipedia and you can read all about the different species, and the different colour morphs within those species. Arowana are nothing like betta, given that the name 'arowana' covers fish of three different genera [four if you include Arapaima] from 3 different continents. The species Scleropages formosus [asian arowana] has been selectively bred to produce different colour strains, although they do not differ from the wild types anywhere near as much as captive bred betta do. The three basic colours of the asian aro [green, red, gold] are from different populations, which are now being classified as individual species. S. formosus = green, S. aureus = gold/rtg, S. legenderi = red. So no they haven't really "originated from the same types". Snookie the closest thing to a "small arowana" would be a pantadon butterfly, similar looking mouth and also very prehistoric, but completely lacking in the motion of a true arowana. Any aro will/should get to 2' at the very least, so not really small...

Lucky, my love of all things south american extends to them too, would seriously consider doing a blackwater biotope with a few of them if they were available here. As P44 said, a fish called "Mono poly" was available when the first lot of Nandus came in, how ever the ones I saw at HFF weren't the real deal.

The ones I saw didn't have any barbels and after looking through the Axelrod with the guys at HFF we decided it was an asian species.

Are you sure? I know Monocirrhus polyacanthus was supposed to come in, but the ones I saw were incorrectly named.

No emperor snappers this time? I love that enormous clam they have in the display tank. Did you see if they still have the red tailed gold arowana for sale?

Did some of them come in?? IIRC they were supposed to come in with the first lot of Nandus but ended up being something else. I don't recall seeing them here in recent years, if at all.

Yeah I saw some massive ones in the London Aquarium. I was looking for the usual pic I post in threads about pacu with a guy holding up one vertically that is way bigger than his torso, but couldn't find it. One of those things you have to see in person to appreciate eh.

There's not too many big rivers that flow through native forests around Auckland, could either try port waikato or up the west coast somewhere, just don't expect scenes like down south with beaches covered in wood....

So why is it fine? :-? They're about the #1 fish that should never be sold in shops here. They get to 3' long, 2' high, 6"+ thick, and unlike most of the other monsters sold for aquaria they are very active, like to school, and aren't flexible at all. Out of a 3' silver aro, 3' snakehead, 3' redtailed cat and a 3' pacu the pacu will need a far bigger tank than the others to be housed properly. In asia where its warm enough to keep them as pond fish, then different story, but in NZ I doubt if anyone outside the Napier aquarium has a tank suitable to house them. *edit* sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words... http://www.arowana.asia/freshwater%20pacu.jpg http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gaEFTk6fMG8/S ... /Pacu2.jpg

Haha! Had a friend with dreads like that in highschool....

Mine is also growing slowly [but surely] in my 800L tank. What about one of these? viewtopic.php?f=24&t=47696 Very nearly walked out with one the other day, nice looking fish, won't get too big or aggressive for your tank.

Now the real question; was the fro natural of permed???

Depends how hefty I guess. Silver aros are pretty expensive in comparison [and by normal peoples standards] yet shops seem to turn over a fair few of them, far more that 8x3x2' tanks I'd bet...