Quick Stats
Scientific Name: Scleropages jardini
Distribution: Australia North Queensland as well as the Gulf of Carpentaria drainage system and west in Adelaide River.
Size: 50 to 60cm
Common Names: Saratoga,Spotted barramundi, Australian Pearl Arowana
Temperature: 27c(82f)
pH: 6.7
General Characteristics
Saratoga are solitary fish. Very territorial and intolerant to members of thier spiecies, they are by no means a community fish and should be housed alone in a obviously extremly large tank. As they are natural jumpers any suiteable sized aquarium they are housed in, should be equipped with a heavy lid that is additionally weighed down. Their jumping can be a major problem when performing tank maintenance, but not so extremely as can be the case with the closely related Scleropages leichardti.
Aquarium Set Up
As stated above, this fish has the capacity to get quite large. Also, due to it's predatory nature and need to swim and prowl the tank, a minimum aquarium size recommendation per specimen would be of roughly 750 litres (or 200 US gallons), long tank prefered with at least enough width for the fish to turn around easily in.
As this fish is not known to have been bred in captivity, they are normally introduced in the trade from thier natural environment and therefore, care in water quality is primordial in their keeping. They require very clear water, and substrate should also be chosen with the intent on maximizing the ease of maintenance. A sand or gravel size that minimizes the trapping of nitrates and waste would go a long way in keeping this fish healthy and in prime condition for a very long time. Suitable filtration for them would be similar as the basic 10x volume ratio that is used in cichlid keeping. Their natural habitat will normally provide rather strong flowing water so this is one fish that would likely remain rather unphased by the extra current provided with overfiltration.
Feeding
Opportunistic and carnivorous, saratoga are generally mid-high level to surface feeders and will benefit more from a live protein based diet than a pellet based staple one. This diet usually consists of a broad range of live food, going from various insects, small fish, amphibians and crustaceans as well as yabbies. If pellets become part of this fish's diet, they should not only be very high in protein content but they should by no means be the sole source of nutrition and a high quality floating pellet is of primordial importance.
Breeding
The female Saratoga is a large volume mouth brooder. One spawn can consist of 60 to 200 rather large eggs and during brooding time will not accept any nourishment, which can be a period of approximately 2 weeks. After the fry hatch, the female will continue to protect the fry within her mouth when she feels they are in harm's way, until they become such size as to go off and find a site of thier own. The fry that fail to find a spot to themselves may form loose scheols finding safety in numbers, until such a time where all of them find a territory to establish and become solitary fish themselves .