A large marine fish in an exhibit in a Chinese public aquarium has died after becoming grossly overweight from eating kilos of fish every day.
A diet of 10kg/22 lbs of fresh fish every day saw the grouper at Beihai Sea World in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region grow from a size of just 30cm/12" to a massive 150kg/330 lbs and around 1.6m/5'4" in length in just five years.
But the plentiful supply of food and the lazy nature of the fish saw it pile on fat. Yang Chunyong, a breeding engineer at the aquarium told China Daily that the fish had developed a chronic disease called arteriosclerosis, in which the arterial walls thicken and impair blood flow as a result of its diet and lifestyle.
The grouper (or groper, as it is called in China) outgrew all of his other tankmates and the aquarium has now introduced a new feeding regime which consists of smaller feed quantities and a more balanced diet for the other five groupers - all of which weigh over 100kg/220 lbs.
Chunyong told China Daily that wild groupers are believed to live for around 10 years in the wild, but captive ones typically reach an age of around seven years: "We will move the five giants to a bigger home and encourage them to do more excercises to keep fit", he added.