you know it was just about three months ago when I purchased three more Asian
Arowana for my local fish store one fish two fish now being a 2000 gallon
aquarium of course a dream for me would be to have an Asian Arowana community as
well as freshwater stingrays and I was well on my way we have five freshwater
stingrays in there right now as well as at first we only had one Asian Arowana
of course an Asian Arowana community is cost prohibitive but I got a really good
deal on the remaining three so I had together what's up guys no real issue
with an Asian Arowana community is the fact that you're probably always going
to have fish with torn fins and they're always gonna kind of look beat up
because Asian Arowana tend to be a pretty territorial so a lot of the times
you want to add in seven or more and cram them into a relatively small tank
which tends to diffuse aggression but the arowana still look kind of terrible
so adding only four to a 2000 gallon aquarium was a bit risky however over
the past couple of months I've actually had great success all of the initial
fighting that they did subsided and they started getting along fantastically you
see this wall went great until I left for a few days you see being so small in
such a large aquarium and having success initially means that long term but I'm
probably going to have success all I got to do is keep them well-fed if I don't
all hell could possibly break loose and that's kind of what happened while I was
gone this past weekend now these guys are kind of just sucking around over in
the corner right now I just fed them and I was just messing around with the water
flows and lots of lights on the tank so they're kind of stressed out right now
however you can see that they will get along just fine if they're well fed but
like I said they didn't eat while I was gone so as soon as I got home I fed them
so of course over the next few weeks these guys are gonna heal back up their
fins will go back to normal and I'm really excited about the fact that
they're simply getting along but a true before and after you need some
differences but with Asian Arowana they take years to mature and get their
coloration the coloration like all fish are based on a number of factors though
first and foremost genetics there's you can only feed or put a fish in certain
environment but they're only gonna get so far depending on what type of
genetics they have for example Frank isn't the best-looking flowerhorn so he
probably has some pretty poor genetics in him however he's probably got the
best personality in this entire gallery and that's why I love him and I think
many of you guys love him however if this guy was bred for his chins he's a
champion he's got seven my fat little Frank
so of course genetics is gonna play a role in how your fish look and but again
there's there's nothing you could do about that after you purchased the fish
of course when it comes to Asian Arowana you can make sure that you purchase from
a reputable firm but there's other factors that we can have an effect on in
terms of their coloration so for example when I feed my discus I want their reds
and oranges to come through fire more and I can have a direct impact on that
with their diet so when I make their food I ensure I include things like
paprika and a Stax ofin or however you pronounce that you get the idea that's
certainly going to bring out a lot of the reds but when it comes to herbivores
like for example some African cichlids one of the things you kind of want to
focus on here is feeding them a vegetable date based diet like spirulina
which can help intensify their colors as well so of course their genetics and
diet are gonna play a massive role in the overall coloration of their fish but
the environment we put them in has an even bigger impact believe it or not of
course you want your fish to be happy we need perimeters to be ideal for the fish
and at the very least you want to make sure there's no ammonia or nitrates
present nitrates are fine we're gonna do our water changes remove the nitrates as
well as dissolved organics but this just an insurer
that the fish is happy and healthy now we've gone over the next thing immensely
in the past the actual layout of the equator if you look at my angels we have
a very high contrast with this fish they look like they're standing out
tremendously I mean check it out with that said some fish react
differently to different colors of backgrounds the darker the background a
lot of fish will tend to try to camouflage in with it darkening their
color now with some fish you kind of don't want that so you'll go with the
lighter color and again this just comes all comes back down to their environment
now of course lighting plays a huge role as well and depending on the color
spectrum you're using the intensity etc your fish can look dramatically
different depending on what you're using and that brings up the next point the
one thing that we have no control over or at least really can't get into our
aquariums properly or accurately is up there somewheres behind the clouds the
Sun now there of course there are a ton of these ones here that truly can
replicate sunlight and even grow plants as well as coral and look absolutely
amazing however there's one thing that they won't do and that's tan your fish
yes tanning your fish which is extremely common with Asian Arowana
now when you look at a lot of red arowana and you see that truly deep rich
blood-red Arowana coloration you think well that's just
great genetics and a great diet and of course genetics and their environment
and everything plays a role but they don't get to that coloration without
actually tanning them which brings up the point of how do you get all of your
arowana to kind of look their best now when it comes to blue base cross backs
or really golds in general you kind of want to put them in something called
white tank treatment it's a bear completely white painted tank with a low
water level this ensures that the fish tries to blend into this white
background which enhances its gold coloration and then when you put it in a
darker tank it tries to darken up and all of that gold and blue
Fuli shines through and they look absolutely stunning this doesn't work on
a red arowana we look towards tanning but how do you tan and arowana
well the same thing that actually tans us the UVA and UVB rays now some Asian
Arowana Keepers when they are grooming their era Juana's try to put them out in
outdoor facilities and that's a lot of times again why you see if you've ever
seen Asian Arowana being farmed they'll be in outdoor ponds which is ideal for
breeding however they'll always look absolutely stunning that's simply
because they're exposed to the UV B and UVA rays how can we replicate this in
the home aquarium though well with simple light bulbs this is a rep D Sun
UVB 10 point o light the 10 point o means 10% UVB 30% UVA the problem with
these though is that it's difficult to penetrate water as well as glass or
acrylic and now I'm using one point six inch thick acrylic on this Aquarius this
could be hard to penetrate plus it's four feet deep again difficult to
penetrate that water surface none of this is sponsored by the way is just
simply a bulb that works for tanning so we can simply keep the aquarium open top
and put a bunch of these lights over top of it starting off the tanning process
slowly for a couple of hours a day for you know a couple weeks slowly
increasing it to say 12 hours a day and even some go pretty dramatic and goes
tanning 24 hours a day in my opinion this will cause too much stress to the
fish and potentially stop it from eating it could become lethargic or - around
the aquarium hurting itself ideally you don't want to exceed 12 hours a day
which still is going to cause a tremendous amount of algae but again the
grooming process isn't pretty I just want to bring you along and give you an
insight to it because when you see the end result of an absolutely stunning
Asian Arowana that is tends to be five years of
intense grooming on that fish so putting these little bulbs over top of the
aquarium is a and it's kind of a good idea but we're
really only tanning the top of the fish which tends not to matter as much
because we see the Asian Arowana 'z from the sides so of course I could figure
out a way to kind of mount these to the sides of the aquarium which is lined up
with where the Asian Arowana typically swim and I just go the entire length on
both sides however penetrating this 1.6 inch thick
acrylic I'm not gonna get all of the UVB rays through it simply because the UVB
doesn't travel as far as UVA so it's not going to be really effective but that
doesn't mean these types of bulbs don't work I just have to create some sort of
an underwater housing now there are Asian Arowana tanning bulbs that you
could put inside your aquariums to tan them but I'm not sure if I'm going to
actually tan these guys because this aquarium is always on video we're always
showing it and always talking about it and I know that every video moving
forward I'm gonna have to explain why there's bulbs inside the aquarium and I
know that's just gonna get frustrating for myself as well as you guys so I
don't know we'll see what happens but what could I use these bulbs for could
you use them to tan your fish and the simple answer is yes you see Frank is a
flower horn and he might not be the best-looking flower horn and there's
only so much I could do about it however tanning him can certainly intensify the
red within him so if I click on one of these lights it doesn't look like it's
doing much to the fish it just looks like a natural light bulb but it is
emitting UVA and UVB lights he spends most of his time up near the top so that
is ideal over time 3 to 6 months he definitely turned bright red but will he
actually do it no but why not is it unnatural not really this is happening
in the wild of course and that's why a lot of the times wild caught fish look
tremendously better than tank-raised and I know many people will be offended
and think it's a natural and cool and I understand I will probably see you
someday out there with an umbrella over a stream making sure the fish are
protected by these Rays I'm kidding but you get the idea this isn't some
that's unnatural but doing it in the aquarium for long periods of time can
potentially cause a lot of stress to the fish and I might not get the results
that I'm looking for with the types of bulbs that I have unless I truly kind of
deconstruct this aquarium and have bulbs on the inside all over the place which
in my opinion kind of takes away from it I think I'm just going to let them
naturally progress over time otherwise if I want to do it properly I take them
out and have them in individual aquariums I've thrown them properly and
it's just going to be next to impossible in this tank and in the meantime I'm
just gonna have an ugly-looking aquarium so am I going to do it absolutely not is
this something that you should do probably not but it's up to you if you
want to do it it can cause damages to your fish if abused and even yourself if
you know looking into the light for long periods of time of course it could
potentially cause damages to your eyes but whether or not I'll be tanning my
fish has been a question that I keep getting repetitively so I'd only didn't
want to only cover it but I kind of wanted to go over some information of it
as well so we don't have to come back to it so that's that I'd love to get your
guys's thoughts on tanning your fish or what you think the best methods for
improving the coloration of your fish are getting the most out of your fish I
do you feel like it's diet environmental factors do you feel like we're simply
missing out on the UVB and UVA rays of the Sun or is it something else in the
comments section below I'd love to hear what your thoughts are and what you have
had success with because a lot of the times the comments section is simply the
second half of the video and I know a lot of people learn even more from there
anyways guys I have a busy week ahead of me so I hope you enjoyed today's video
I'd also like to thank you for watching and if you join me in a couple days on
Thursday I will have a new video for you