Problem arapaima? Poor genetics, latent illness? I doubt but could be my care?

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:04]We're having a problem with the to rapima.

[00:00:11]Um even in the last video where was called u harapime as a cleanup cleanup uh crew.

[00:00:24]They already looked off just progressively. They've been doing worse and worse even though they were seem to be feeding very well, but their uh skull shape has been uh changing with a little depression between the eyes and the eyes are bulging and overall they didn't look healthy to me.

[00:00:56]So, one one of them died today, which was I which I expected.

[00:01:12]It was trying to eat yesterday and literally every five seconds it had to come up and take a breath of air until it had so much air it couldn't go down anymore.

[00:01:28]I'm afraid the other one is going to follow its fate. It's doing slightly better.

[00:01:34]But uh all the symptoms symptomatics is the same.

[00:01:41]Doesn't look right.

[00:01:44]They should they should be much bigger too. We got them two months ago. A little lower than 2 months ago.

[00:01:51]So you um about 3 in a month. They should have been at 4 and 1/2 in that got them. So they should have added 6 in in uh 2 months and be 10 and 1/2 in which I doubt they are. We're going to take out the dead one and measure.

[00:02:16]Um I don't know why or what's happened.

[00:02:24]They did have a funny or unusual skull shape from the beginning.

[00:02:32]Some of you may remember they're very uncomfortable in the beginning in the smaller tank right there in the 4500 in the 45 gallon.

[00:02:41]So as soon as I put them in the 90, the nervous spacing stopped and the eating became much better.

[00:03:06]Maybe they picked up some disease like bacterial disease from a from a bow fin.

[00:03:12]If you remember uh Joe gave us three or four bow fin. They were right here in the quarantine tank, but all these tanks are they run off of that. So, they all share the same water, but I don't know for sure, but they look kind of uh weak, worn out. There's slight redness around the base of their fins.

[00:03:41]The mucus layer is uh too thick.

[00:03:45]The body is bumpy especially when they eat I mean it's just I thought I didn't think much of it until because they were they continued eating well until yesterday when the dead when the one that's now dead was breathing that I mean both of them breathe very very heavy when they're eating every 10 15 seconds or every 30 seconds they have to come up and take a breath which is I don't think it's normal. It's too frequent.

[00:04:23]Well, anyhow, let's let's take out the dead guy and measure him and continue observing this his brother or sister.

[00:04:44]Yeah. So, this guy's about 7 in.

[00:04:48]So, he's about 3 and 1/2 in short of what it should be. Should be 10 and 1/2 in.

[00:04:58]I don't know if you can see his snout looks funny.

[00:05:03]First of all, the there is a underbite and this seems to be short and the eyes are huge.

[00:05:15]Slightly bulging too.

[00:05:22]Stomach is soft.

[00:05:29]Anyhow, we we bought our Apa three times ever. The first two we bought from from the exotic fish shop and they grew to five and 5 and 1/2 ft no problem. One of them was lagging behind, but that was mostly because it was more timid.

[00:05:49]Then we bought five of them uh and we overfed them at some point. So we lost two out of them and one of them was a runt kind of like these guys was growing very slowly and uh he just passed away. So the only two survivors are right now about 6 ft in the 25k.

[00:06:12]So this was a third third ever purchase and either we either we blew it or we got some problematic fish. Who knows?

[00:06:44]The gills are have not a droplet of red in them.

[00:06:53]So I don't know. They did go through a couple of treatments of uh of formal and mealite green again because as we find out the the bow fin didn't have all the lice fish lice killed on them.

[00:07:18]And then recently a lot of fish were rubbing. So we did the prophylactic treatment of three um three doses over a week.

[00:07:31]We use slow doses about half half of the recommended dose or even less. So overall in two months they were exposed to five treatments prophylactic treatments of uh malikite green and formaline of course. So maybe that's why they may be too sensitive at at this size.

[00:07:56]That could be the smoking gun.