Beware: Acclimating Fish Can be DANGEROUS

Okay, I came home with a 20" Albino ID Shark from the LFS. It was dinner time and family and guests were already at the table, I quickly rushed to the dinning table and asked the household help to float the bag in the pond. Here's the photo of the Albino:


5-10 minutes after, I heard a loud bang, a big thud and then sporadic sounds, my worst fears started to enter my mind as my 30" aro might have jumped for some reason.

I quickly sprinted to the pond and saw the majestic 30" beast on the floor, violently hitting its head and tail against the floor in a violent and suicidal flopping motion on the floor.

Faced with this scenario: What is the FIRST thing a monster fish keeper is supposed to do?

Photo of the Aro:

Okay, what is a Monsterfishkeeper to do, (which I did):

Okay. Since nobody wants to play, I might as well give the answer away. The correct answer is B, took my shirt off and used it as a rag to handle the arowana, using your bare hands to lift a beast of this size and weight would be an exercise in futility not to mention dangerous because dropping these guys from a certain height will be disastrous. Having a rag/towel/shirt would give you better traction when holding on them. Hold on to them firmly but don't squeeze. The common error in these situations is that we hold them too loosely, so much so that when they start to struggle, they get loose and fall to the floor, leading to internal and external injuries.

Here some pix of the aro after I threw her in:

Note the scratches on the face, the body and the missing scale. Poor baby.

Unfortunately, it jumped out the one side of the pond where I kept an old driftwood that had a relatively sharp protruding branch, ergo he virttually got stabbed and lost 2 scales, one big and one small:


Since I did not actually witness what happened, I can only surmise what happened:

It was the aro's fasting day, so, he wasn't really in the best of moods...

I guess he mistook the floating plastic bag for something edible and tried to take a bite at it. When his teeth got entangled, similar to how their fins get entangled with nets, he got stuck momentarily and started to violently struggle, as he pulled away strongly, the bag detaches from his teeth and his momentum leads him to barrel across some red bricks. He panics yet again and jumps out.

Am not sure how to prevent this the next time...still thinking what the lesson learned here is...