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Most biggest & expensive fish in the world

The most biggest freshwater fish in the world is the arapaima gigas arowana , it can reach more than 4 meters . if you want to keep one of these guys youd have to get a 6 ton pond . the type of arowanas you usually see in a pet store is the silver arowana witch will reach at least 3 feet in captivity. lets say you went to a petstore and saw one of these fish , you brought a baby one and you put it in a 20 gallon tank , but it eats all your community fish , they get hard to take care of and the food bill goes up. You'd have to get a 200 galon tank to raise one because they get very , very big , the cruel thing about these fish is that people buy them and they think they are easy to take care of so they keep them in a cramp tank , and feed them unhealthy food such as feeder fish . this is very cruel . If you were in asia , the most expensive fish ever paid for is the asian arowana , the red asian arowana is the rarest , the price for a first grade full grown one would probably be a quarter million dollars , although now it is illegal to import the asian arowana it will always be the raest and expensivist fish in the world . Why are these fish the most expensive ? , because they are rare , they are almost extinct and they are prehistoric . This fish has live in the jurasic period and has come back like the coelacanth fish . I raise one myself , a silver arowana . he is very hard to take care of and he , like all arowanas must have crystal clear water . i feed him pellets so his aggresive level is low and give him lots of room . I would recomend this fish only for experts that can afford the food bill , gat a 200 gallon tank , no a lot of info on this fish , and can keep the tank crystall clear by cleaning the water once a week . The only arowana known to be to be in captivity is the asian , black , autralian , and silver .why do people keep this fish , because of good luck , as i already said this fish is prehistoric and has come back to life for us to take care of but it is endangered. The reason people raise these fish is because they bring good luck , if you die you become this fish if you treated your well , brings good health , cast out evil , uphold families togatherness , vital buisness success , and prediction of buiness affairs . I would like to give a very important part about raising fish that eat fish , please do not feed your fish feeder fish , they contain diseases , they make your fish die , they cause trouble with the digestion system , so I recomend feeding them with pellets .for any ifo or comments please reply here .
 
Actually, many fish need live food occasionally, and some will only eat live food. However, feeder fish are very easy to breed, which is one reason why they're so cheap. If you breed your own, you can keep them disease free, and can be sure to have fish of the right size for food for most other fish.
 
the only info on the size of that fish i found was 13 feet. the white sturgeon in the columia river of washington/oregon can attain a length of about 20 feet. it is also freshwater.
 
Last spring I saw a petstore in New York (near Buffalo) selling baby sturgeon. They didn't know what kind of sturgeon they were, and had no clue how big they got (I asked a few people working there). At the time, they were about 1-2 inches long. They were trying to sell them for about $12, as bottom feeding fish, and had them in a small tank. I can't imagine how many poor fools might have bought them, not knowing how big they can get. Personally, I have serious issues with things like that. I personally feel that all pet stores should be required to provide basic information on all animals they sell. Of course, I haven't been back to that store since, and have told a few other people what I think about them.

Anyway, sorry about the rant, just one of those things that really annoys me.
 
It might be one of those fish that only gets as large as it's environment permits... like a plecostomus. They get huge if you put them in a large tank.
 
Hi,

Arapaima is actually not a type of arowana, though it is very closely related. Arowanas (Family Osteoglossidae, subfamily Osteoglossinae) are those fish which have the characteristic 2 barbels on the lower lip. Baramundi from Australia also fall into this subfamily. The name "Arowana" is actually a variant of the original name "Arahuana" (Arauana?) from South America.

The 2 species Araipaima lack the barbels on the lower lip, and are representatives of a different sub-family ( Family Osteoglossidae, subfamily Heterotidinae). The local names for the species in S.A. are "Paiche" or "Pirarucu".

These fish, along with others such as the butterfly fish (Pantodon), Elephant noses (Mormyridae) etc. are often called "Bony Tongues", a rough translation of the Family name (Osteoglossidae). The tongues are "bony" because they are lined with teeth. :)

The reasons for keeping such fish can of course be varied. Apparently in Asia, these fish favor financial success, especially the red and golden arowanas. In Western culture, reasons can vary from machoism, to love of the rare or unusual.

It is apparently not *too* hard to find Arapaima gigas if one is truly set on acquiring one. I have seen listings on the net for them, and this despite the fact that the fish is endangered, and mentioned in one old aquarium book of mine as protected from export. They are of course very expensive. One site I saw mentioned a pet store selling 15 inch specimens for 400$.

I have to agree that keeping this fish by hobbyist isn't really fair to the fish. At even 1/2 the maximum size (which is supposed to be over 4 meters long) the fish could not possibly be happy in "any" home aquarium. Even a 200 gallon tank would be insufficient, since the fish wouldn't be able to turn in it! Or to put it a different way, a 2 meter individual might be acceptably happy in an aquarium the size of my appartment. A 4 metre individual would not.

Also, the aquarium maintenance for this fish would be difficult at best. Many sites on the net state that this fish needs exceedingly clean water, but it isn't hard to imagine that even a very large aquarium will quickly become fouled by the biological processes of such a large fish. Does the fish really need such clean water, or does it really need a mounstrous tank with a proportionatly mounstrous filtration system?

Feeding pellets may be fine when it's a baby, but you'll quickly go broke once it gets over a couple of feet or so if that's what you intend to feed it.

It may be possible that this fish stays smaller in smaller tanks, but this is usually still considered cruel since most fish that are dwarfed in this way still reach a size that is too large for the tank they are inhabiting.

Another of nature's truly wonderful creatures. But best left to public aquariums, or in its original habitat.

Take care!

Chris
 
hey drosera , i did'nt know that you knew so much about arowanas , do you own one .
 
LOL, Goldtrap, somehow, I get the feeling, from his post, that he probably doesn't (and wouldn't) own one.
 
  • #10
Oops, My mistake, Sorry Chris, I should have said 'her', not 'his'. My apologies.
 
  • #11
Hi,

No, I have never owned one, and I wouldn't. I think I wouldn't even own one of the smaller species of arowana, but that's more because I prefer to have many fish instead of one or a few.

No apologies necessary carnivorous. Happens all the time, and it's no big deal anyway. :)

Take care!

Chris.
 
  • #12
I love the prehistoric fishes but only own small killifishes because I have no room for such monsters like arrowanas, paddlefish, sturgeon, FW stingrays, knifefishes, etc. If you're interested in reading a basic introduction about how the japanese keep these large fishes check out Jurassic Fishes published by TFH books.

BTW anybody keeping Celocanths in captivity(zoos/aquariums I mean)?
 
  • #13
Okay.. it may be one of the biggest but it most certainly isn't the most expensive. I was present a few weeks ago at the import of a Koi from Japan, the price for the fish was $4 500 000, (those are American Dollars btw) shipping cost an additional $50 000 and then the vet check once it got here was $200 000. I'm thinking the guy that bought the fish was really into Koi....
 
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