Andre
02-23-2009, 09:48 AM
January 26, 2009
My Arowana has a droopy eye. Why and what can I do?
Hi all,
Been a long time. My apologies… Today is the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year. Year of the Ox! To all my Chinese readers, have a great year ahead and may health, wealth and prosperity follow you! Cheers!
Now back to this very interesting topic. I have been getting a lot of questions as to why this problem happens. What is droopy eye anyway? Well it is a condition where one of the arowana's eye looks like it is going to drop out. The eye juts out as if always looking down. It does somehow look abit unsightly sometimes and I can see the disappointment in the hobbyist voice and emails when they ask me for help.
Ok there is good news and bad news here!
Good news is this is a cosmetic problem and your arowana will not die from it ok!
Ok the bad news is… I'll be frank with you.. I really don't think there is a cure once it has set it! I have seen a book where they did an operation on an arowana with this condition but I'm not sure how successful the operation was.
I will tell you what I think are the probable causes and cure but I will say this, no one has been able to truly ascertain the cause and cure for sure!
CAUSE :
1) When you feed your arowana too much fatty food like beef heart, goldfish, etc, fatty deposits can build up in the eyes. But some people have thrown cold water at this theory because it cannot explain why the fatty deposits only appears on the upper eye portion causing the eye to look down.
2) Arowanas are surface feeders and they usually chase their prey in the water looking around. Hobbyist have this habit of throwing their food into the tank and letting them sink to the bottom. (This is especially the case for non-live food which 80% of the hobbyist feed their arowanas.) The arowanas will then spend alot of their time looking down to search for the food. When this becomes a habit, they get what we can term 'lazy eyes'. This causes them to look down all the time and over time, their eyes become permanently like that… hence droppy eyes!
CURE :
1) Throw the affected arowanas in a pond for a few months for the eyes to readjust back to as they were before! This is not always a plausible option as not everyone has access to a pond!
2) Surgery to correct the problem. As I said, I'm not sure whether this really cures the problem.
3) There was another 'solution' where people said to cover up the whole tank to block off light to the tank for a period of time! I really don't know how this one works and if anyone knows, do let me know!
As you can see, I really don't know any cure that is 100% guaranteed to work.
BUT this much I'm sure of! My arowanas until today has never had droopy eye syndrome! My 5 beautiful golden arowanas are in perfect condition!
Firstly I want to say this… 'PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE HERE!'
From experience, this is my take on the cause of the droppy eye syndrome. TO ME, I believe it is caused by CAUSE 2) which I explained above. We cannot simply throw the food into the tank and let them sink to the bottom and expect the arowanas to always pick it from the bottom of the tank. We must feed it piece by piece. What I do is drop the non-live food one at a time into the tank so that my arowanas eat from the top! This way they will always be looking up like in their natural habitat! I have been doing this for years and I never had this problem with my fish.
I used to feed my arowanas alot of goldfish before as well but this has not caused any problems so I kinda rule out the fatty food argument. But again this has not been proven beyond a doubt so I can only speak from my experience!
Anyway I hope you have gain some insight into this problem and hopefully be able to prevent it if it has not hit you already. Cheers and take care.
Mời các bạn đọc xem rất hay, mặt dầu đề tài này không phải là mới.....
My Arowana has a droopy eye. Why and what can I do?
Hi all,
Been a long time. My apologies… Today is the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year. Year of the Ox! To all my Chinese readers, have a great year ahead and may health, wealth and prosperity follow you! Cheers!
Now back to this very interesting topic. I have been getting a lot of questions as to why this problem happens. What is droopy eye anyway? Well it is a condition where one of the arowana's eye looks like it is going to drop out. The eye juts out as if always looking down. It does somehow look abit unsightly sometimes and I can see the disappointment in the hobbyist voice and emails when they ask me for help.
Ok there is good news and bad news here!
Good news is this is a cosmetic problem and your arowana will not die from it ok!
Ok the bad news is… I'll be frank with you.. I really don't think there is a cure once it has set it! I have seen a book where they did an operation on an arowana with this condition but I'm not sure how successful the operation was.
I will tell you what I think are the probable causes and cure but I will say this, no one has been able to truly ascertain the cause and cure for sure!
CAUSE :
1) When you feed your arowana too much fatty food like beef heart, goldfish, etc, fatty deposits can build up in the eyes. But some people have thrown cold water at this theory because it cannot explain why the fatty deposits only appears on the upper eye portion causing the eye to look down.
2) Arowanas are surface feeders and they usually chase their prey in the water looking around. Hobbyist have this habit of throwing their food into the tank and letting them sink to the bottom. (This is especially the case for non-live food which 80% of the hobbyist feed their arowanas.) The arowanas will then spend alot of their time looking down to search for the food. When this becomes a habit, they get what we can term 'lazy eyes'. This causes them to look down all the time and over time, their eyes become permanently like that… hence droppy eyes!
CURE :
1) Throw the affected arowanas in a pond for a few months for the eyes to readjust back to as they were before! This is not always a plausible option as not everyone has access to a pond!
2) Surgery to correct the problem. As I said, I'm not sure whether this really cures the problem.
3) There was another 'solution' where people said to cover up the whole tank to block off light to the tank for a period of time! I really don't know how this one works and if anyone knows, do let me know!
As you can see, I really don't know any cure that is 100% guaranteed to work.
BUT this much I'm sure of! My arowanas until today has never had droopy eye syndrome! My 5 beautiful golden arowanas are in perfect condition!
Firstly I want to say this… 'PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE HERE!'
From experience, this is my take on the cause of the droppy eye syndrome. TO ME, I believe it is caused by CAUSE 2) which I explained above. We cannot simply throw the food into the tank and let them sink to the bottom and expect the arowanas to always pick it from the bottom of the tank. We must feed it piece by piece. What I do is drop the non-live food one at a time into the tank so that my arowanas eat from the top! This way they will always be looking up like in their natural habitat! I have been doing this for years and I never had this problem with my fish.
I used to feed my arowanas alot of goldfish before as well but this has not caused any problems so I kinda rule out the fatty food argument. But again this has not been proven beyond a doubt so I can only speak from my experience!
Anyway I hope you have gain some insight into this problem and hopefully be able to prevent it if it has not hit you already. Cheers and take care.
Mời các bạn đọc xem rất hay, mặt dầu đề tài này không phải là mới.....