Well, here on Cut Day +1, I already see new growth on Max's fin. There is a series of tiny little bumps down the nub of the dorsal fin where the cartilage appears to be coming back. He's swimming around pretty well again and trying to use his dorsal fin. Unfortunately, I seem to have roughed him up a bit in the transfer from the big tank to the hospital tank in the net. I'm going to try to get a new picture of him tonight. I'm going to document the regrowth of the fin photographically over the coming weeks, though I'm more than likely not going to post every single picture on MFK. I'm planning to post .gifs periodically showing C+ day numbers so you all can see the growth well without having to search through pages.
Chicx, Just to calm your concerns somewhat the damage Max received is not that big a deal. With 4 VATF and a GATF mine fight all the time. Damage like that is normal and not even that bad. In a few weeks it heals and it's almost like new. Currently one of my VATF has a chunk missing from one side about 5mm in diameter. It's been healing and I anticipate it will return like new. Also he had about 40% of it's dorsal ripped off and it's healed back about 20% already. This type of thing happens on a normal basis. The only thing I notice that doesn't heal completely are the tail hooks. Either it takes a reeealy long time to come back or it may never return.
Thanks for the feedback. I always very much value your input; you're one of the more successful ATF keepers here. You've had great success with your fish. I am very much encouraged by the report of your fish healing well after similar injuries.
He should heal up well in time try not to stress too much. Always a good chance of things like this happening with multiple predatory characin in the same tank. Probably lucky the aro only caught hit dorsal and not his spine.
It may just be light reflection or the camera lens but keep watch on that right eye. In the image above it appears as if there is a small milky spot under the outer lens. My old goliath developed something like this after he hit the 12-13" mark and it progressed into some type of growth inside his eye. Never impacted him health wise but I believe it may have decreased his vision in the eye. I never really paid much attention to it until later because he always swam into the current in one direction and the affected eye was on the other side of his body.
I am very thankful that the aro only got his fin. I think he may have gotten Max's body too, but it wasn't a good grip thankfully. You can see in the pic how Max lost some scales right below the fin so I think I got really lucky. Drogo is a lot bigger than Max, he's about 6" longer and a good bit thicker, so I'm thinking he has to go.
There's two things going on with the eye. Part of it is an artifact from my firing my flash above the tank. It causes a refraction in his eye that is shaped like a figure 8 with a much smaller bottom loop. That's visible in quite a few of my pics of him, though I normally edit it out in post processing.
The white on his eye in this last image is genuinely concerning to me, though it has already mostly cleared up. It is definitely on the outside of his eye though. It looks like either it was scratched or something was on the eye or maybe the slime coat was missing. It doesn't appear to be on the inside, though I am going to keep a very close eye on this. Thanks for the advice!
Edit-
Here's the picture from tonight, C+1 (cut plus one day, military style). I REALLY wish that I had taken a picture last night after the cut was made. There is already noticable growth on his fin! Last night the fin was straight, now there are knobs on each cartilage ray where its starting to grow back. That's new growth in LESS than 24 hours!
. Who knows, maybe he can finally teach Baki to eat a damned pellet.
