Piranha Question

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Lexx

Feeder Fish
May 3, 2011
2
0
0
Pelham
Hello Folks,
My first post to this forum, thanks in advance to anyone wishing to help me out. I'm new to fish keeping and have been doing some research on piranha (red belly), I've always found them interesting. I was talking to a aquarium store (I'm guessing manager) about different general questions eventually getting to piranhas. He told me that he found a lot of people become disappointed with them as they tend to spend most of their time hiding because they are a pretty shy by nature. Just hoping to get some opinions from piranha owners on this topic as well as maybe some pros and cons of piranha keeping. As I said earlier any advise would be much appreciated.
 
Welcome to the forum and fish keeping.

Piranha are awesome fish. The people here will be able to give you great advice so you've come to the right place. In my opinion they are among the coolest fish to own.

I don't want to discourage you but its my opinion that since you are new to fish keeping maybe you should hold off on the Red Belly's for now. They are a labor intensive fish for a first aquarium. Frequent water changes, frequent filter cleaning, with the food they eat water parameters can get finked easily. Not to mention they need fairly large tanks.

I'd say keep a tank for a few months, get some hands on experience maintaining a tank, handling the equipment keeping good water parameters. Then once you are comfortable getting yourself some Reds. You won't be disappointed, and I think your fish may be happier and healthier in the long run.

I am speaking from experience here. I have kept fish for almost 20 years and I had to sell my last group of Red Belly's (just a few month ago) cause I couldn't house and care for them properly due to extenuating circumstances. My first group of Reds a few years ago I am ashamed to say probably suffered from some bad choices I made. They are just to beautiful and expensive of fish to not take care of properly.
 
Welcome aboard. Piranha aren't that skittish if raised right. If you handfeed them as babies & juvies they'll be much calmer as adults. Kinda like a pup, you chain it up out back & never show it attention it'll most likely be hyper. If you spend time with it it'll make a much better pet. I know you can't take piranha for a walk but you should interact with them & best time for that is during feeding time. Pygos(rbp & others)will act better the more there is. At least 5. Tank maintenance is no worse with piranha as say Cichlids. Still have water changes, filter cleaning, ect
 
Lexx;5100597; said:
Hello Folks,
My first post to this forum, thanks in advance to anyone wishing to help me out. I'm new to fish keeping and have been doing some research on piranha (red belly), I've always found them interesting. I was talking to a aquarium store (I'm guessing manager) about different general questions eventually getting to piranhas. He told me that he found a lot of people become disappointed with them as they tend to spend most of their time hiding because they are a pretty shy by nature. Just hoping to get some opinions from piranha owners on this topic as well as maybe some pros and cons of piranha keeping. As I said earlier any advise would be much appreciated.
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i was told the same when i originally was hunting for them....and he's right. if you spend time here you'll see alot of people get bored of them once they pass they hit sub adults and there's not much of a noticeable growth and they mellow out. the advice people gave you here is pretty good though about how to get them out of those natural tendecies
 
Thanks to everyone for the advise, its much appreciated. This is definitely something I want to research further and not rush in to. If I were to continue down the RBP road how many would you all consider to be an acceptable number of fish for a 120 gallon aquarium? With that size a tank would it be possible to also throw in some tank-mates. Seems to be a much debated topic with some for and some against, have seen some examples on youtube as well of people incorporating other species with RBP's. Like I said, don't want to make any impulse decisions.
 
As they are predators so they are by nature for hiding. its nice to have piranha in the tank but I really don't want to share place with them if we both in water. they have great horrible teeth so I don't want that.
 
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