Surgery

[Beaujarle]

I read thru a lot of threads & noticed members performing surgeries on gills,etc...etc.

Can someone please highlight steps to go thru to perform surgery on aro??? (in case I need yo 'doctor' my aro :D ) ??

[Alvin Koh]

Sure Beaujarle,

here goes.

There are 3 mains steps to minor operations performed on Arowanas. As daunting as the procedure sounds, alot of hobbyists have actually attempted it without dire consequences.

1) Anesthesize the fish
2) Perform required corrections
3) Awakening the fish

Here are some guides off the net
(Teck Chye's site)
http://www.petprovision.com/Articles/FinCut.html

Our own initial article done 2 years ago with slightly less detailed descriptions
http://arofanatics.com/members/alvinkoh/rtgoperation1/

Alvin.

[Beaujarle]

Cheers Alvin :) :) :)

Wondering if its possible to perform surgery withour transmore ??

cuz I read that some member tagged his aro without transmore cuz transmore stresses the fish :confused: :confused: :confused:

[Apollosiao]

Wouldn't the aro feel pain when pple are cuttin away part of their body?
even after the transmore wouldnt they feel it?
:confused: :confused: :confused:

[Isna]

hi appollosiao,
even till today, we can't say that animals feel PAIN...
PAIN is a subjective thing. your pain might b different from mine.....hehe..well, that's what the neurologists n pain experts say..

anyway, we know for sure that animals respond to certain seemingly PAINFUL procedures, because we can observe n measure stuff like behavioural changes, colour changes, heart rate, breathing, stress hormone levels etc......whether they feel PAIN or not...who knows....but, common sense tells us, yes, they probably DO feel something....n probably don't like it! that's good enough reason for most of us to think about invasive procedures, like what u r doing now:D :D

anyway, a fact, fishes seem to b rather 'resistant' to pain....losing a scale technically is equivalent to a deep sore on our skin that bleeds n hurts. they don't seem to mind too much....cloudy eye.....corneal ulcers etc...these r really painful--imagine if u have one!! but most of them don;t mind too much..

same for gill cover surgery. they don't seem to mind too much post-op...u r absolutely right. the pain-relieving effects of anesthetics wear out quickly....who knows. mayb 10-20 years from now, it'll become a standard procedure to give pain-relieve post-op, like an aspirin or an injection of opioids, NSAIDS etc .....mayb, it'll become standard procedure to give a local anesthetic at the incision site...
but before these can occur, we need to know more about how these drugs work in fishes, their side-effects n toxicities etc...n whether they work in the first place!! no point giving something when it won't make much difference at the end.:D
n think of the hundreds of fish that suffer PAIN each day from being fished from the sea.......no one complains right??

[Beaujarle]

Fellow members,
Cheers so much for all your guidance.
Performed the surgery last night @ 7:30 pm (local time) & glad to
say that it was a success.

After 2 days of starving, my 1.5 red was gobbling up live fishes once regained consciousness & swimming happily.

Let us wish together & hope that its tail will grow nicely.

Cheers again.....:) :) :) ;)