The Bala Shark

By Kevin Thurston
From CAS Newsletter and Aquarist, Colorado Aquarium Society
Aquarticles.com

The Bala shark is one of the most popular aquarium fish of modern times and it is with good reason. The Bala shark (Balantiocheilus melanopterus) gets its common name from shortening the genus name and from the scythe shaped dorsal fin that gives it a shark like appearance. It has also been called the tricolor shark and silver shark. Most people are familiar with their appearance because they are usually seen in every store that sells aquarium fish.

The Bala shark is a peaceful addition to almost any aquarium. They are readily available in small sizes and they grow slowly on their way to their large adult size, which can be well over a foot long. They are a little more sensitive to tap water additives and poor water quality and I suspect that this is the reason you rarely see large specimens in fish shops for sale. In stores that take trade-ins for large fish, you'll find oscars and other large cichlids, maybe some large silver dollars, but seldom will you find large bala sharks. It doesn't seem that very many people are raising them up to outgrow their aquariums.

One of my favorite war stories of the tropical fish profession involves the bala shark and dates back to 1975. Back then, bala sharks were not commercially bred and they were rare, expensive, large, wild caught and very susceptible to ich infestations. I had recently been put in charge of buying the fish for the store that I worked in. This involved driving down to the wholesaler, picking out the fish, bringing them back with an invoice and my boss would send a check in the mail. When I was first trained for this job, my predecessor took me to the fish warehouse and showed me how it was done. We brought back an invoice for about $45 and my predecessor was worried that she had spent too much money and would be chastised for having spent so much. I had slowly been bringing back invoices that were progressively higher and higher when the wholesaler had brought in some very large, very expensive bala sharks. They were priced such that the store would have had to charge $30 each for them and I doubted that I could sell them at that price. I voiced my misgivings to the wholesaler, who had a solution. Buy six of them and the price would be reduced to where the store would only charge $21 each for them. Now back then, that was a lot of money. I wasn't sure I could sell them or not. I had placed the rest of my order for the usual stuff. I was mulling the decision to add the bala sharks when one of the patriarchs of the pet business in Denver, a guy who had been in the business for a lot of years even back then, noticed my dilemma. He asked me what was bothering me and I told him about the bala shark decision I was faced with. I said I didn't know if I could sell them or not. He simply told me "You sure can't sell them if they're not in your store". Taking advice from my competitor, I added 6 bala sharks to the order. Those bala sharks would cost about as much as the whole order my predecessor was worried was too much money. I carefully acclimated them to their metal framed 55 gallon aquarium and the next day a customer I had never seen before bought one of the bala sharks. He came back a week later and bought another one. In a few weeks we had sold every one of those bala sharks. All my worry had been for nothing. In fact it turned out that my boss had absolutely no problem with the size of the invoices that were coming from the wholesaler because I moved more fish through that store than anybody they ever had do it. Unfortunately, I never learned that until many years later. I think they were afraid that I might want a raise or something.

Now days, bala sharks are commercially bred in vast quantities, which accounts for their availability. They are unlikely to be bred by the hobbyist because of the size required for breeders and the spawning triggers, which are helped commercially by hormone injections. However the hobbyist can work to meet the challenge of growing their fish to the remarkably large size that they are capable of achieving.