This post may be picture heavy. My last post was about 4 months ago, but I feel that I should do an update before I further update on an experiment I am performing which at only 6 days old, seems to give visibly great improvement on colour enhancing of my community of blue base arowanas.
I'd like to focus on one thing in this post. Just my own observation, if I'm not accurate, beg your pardon. I have a collection of arowanas 13 strong. There is one thing that is so glaringly obvious on how the beauty of an arowana can be predicted. One word : GENES.
Genetic heritage is the most important determinant of potential of beauty. Yes, I would totally agree that it is so much easier said than done. So, I walked the path, and found it out myself.
Long story short, I have an arowana community of 13 arowanas in a tank, half of them belong to known good lineage. The other half, some known, mostly I dunno. I'll jump straight to then and now pictures.
This piece not showing too much of colours due to extra growth rate but seems like a gem.
Can't forget this one. The first fish of good genetic heritage that took my breath.
My current favourite. I was always expecting deep blue or purple, but at the moment, deep dark green it is. It remained dark grey until about a month ago before starting to show real colours. Also one super fast growing fish. And so beautiful, it's crazy.
Another fast growing fish which just started to show some colours. I have 4 extra fast growing fish in the tank. I was told this line was bred for the colours. It has another 2 siblings together, but they are scrawny in comparison.
This and the one before this are the hardest to get the right picture. It shows amazing combination of colours, but I can never truly capture them. It's purple on the 5th and 6th row. Downwards, it's a combo of blue and green. I can't describe it with words, and neither does this picture does it true justice, but it's close.
Well, some remained as how they were.
The tank.....
I knew all along that blue base arowanas that are exposed to natural sunlight has much better colour development than those housed indoors without much or any direct contact with sunlight. I do tan my arowanas since day 1, but never really gave it much thought. I just know that almost all the brands that I know just say how much UVA or UVB it produces.
The sun has much more than just UV to offer. So, I did a little research mostly by reading reviews and how certain more expensive full spectrum lights brands goes "we are the only company that can produce natural sunlight" bashing on lights that are full spectrum. These lights are meant for hydroponic, so fixing them to a tank can be challenging. So far, quite a few reviews agree on one thing. Diodes (the D of LED lights) from Samsung are superior. And from my understanding, I will have to agree that by calling their own lights full spectrum is a marketing gimmick. Fine, those upmarket brands do have their point in saying cheaper brands can't imitate the sun, but then we don't know what lights are the ones that does the job of developing the colours of blue base arowanas so much better. So, I take that as a hit or miss, and bought full spectrum lights with Samsung diodes.
Only 6 days of trial, I can already visibly see the difference. The colours develop fast. I mean I'm seriously saying I can see it visibly change in just 6 days. But there are two drawbacks so far. One is when it's turned on (1900 to 0700 on timer), the fishes just look gold. I can't see much of any colours at night. Guess I'll have to add white non tanning LED display lights to see colours, which I haven't. The other drawback seems more serious. The fishes seem somewhat slightly disorientated, not overly so as in they will swim into each other or any object, but they just act differently to when they just were before. But I did change positions of the lights as there are no submersible hydroponic lights. So, I'm not sure if they are getting used to the new norm, but I'll stop the full spectrum immediately if I sense that it stresses the fish out overly.
But as you can see, even if the lower grade or late bloomers develop, they are still no match to a fish of good genetic heritage. There's just nothing that beat genes. Genes are just that, it can't be challenged.
I regret I didn't start with all from a trusted farm. The tank would have looked much more harmonious should I have known that if all are similar, it's way more pleasing to the eye.
