Piranha

only got pics of tank before i caught them to move on to there new owner

 

Look, tails are always being chomped, and they always regrow. Fins are no problem. But these guys take out chunks of flesh!
As far as I know, no vertebrate is capable of regenerating an organ, which an eye is.
So similarly, a lizard can regrow a tail, but not an eye!

 

@top dog: those are BOSS piranha!
Got more pics?

Turns out we have quite a few dark horses on the forum!

 

That's reasonable, it takes them about 6 months to reach adult size.

 

@top dog: great stuff, man!
Big piranha like those must have had a healthy appetite. One large chicken per week?
A school of large piranha will put a dent in your fishfood budget.
Can I ask you to post ALL the pics you took of them, especially the ones you took as they were growing?
They DO grow at a phenomenal rate...









Maybe this thread will bring more ex-piranha keepers out of the closet!!!

 

fed them hake fillets and meal worms, tried to avoid bird and mammal as was worried about them not being able to digest the protein
the random way that they would just pick at each other was very odd, rate cichlids are far more aggressive just piranha have mad ninja skills at causing damage
would not keep red bellies again but if i ever came across a rohm black piranha would def make space for him
got them big so no pics of them growing out sorry man

 

Yeah I was just coming here to say isn't it weird to think they're actually tetras, but you beat me to it

 

Okay so I fed them chicken fillets and earthworms, I avoided hake because I didn't want them to acquire a taste for fish!

You're quite right about cichlids being a lot more aggressive than piranha, I guess because most cichlids are pugnacious territory holders, while piranha school.

Most of the damage inflicted seems to be accidental rather than purposeful.

This is why it is important to feed many more chunks of food than there are fish at one time: if all of them rush for the same morsel with teeth flashing, someone is likely to get hurt.
A piece of piranha lip comes off with the chunk of food that another piranha grabs out of the other one's mouth.
And the first piranha ends up looking like this:



I think the eyes were lost in similar fashion.

BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY DON'T HAVE IT OUT ONCE IN A WHILE!

The pecking order has to be re-established every once in a while, but it's usually non-fatal...
@top dog: It's a pity you got them as adults, for me the best part was growing them up, and watching them develop from TETRAS to MONSTERS!

Like you, I would NOT keep piranha again in the future, even if I came across some Rhoms or Manuelis.

Two years was enough to last a lifetime!

 

mine actively seemed to snack on each other, from research i did it seems like scales and mins make up major part of there diet in the wild, brings new meaning to meeting mates for lunch being part of a piranha school
found best way to feed was smaller than bite size chunks to avoid them biting over each other
good experiences but prefer cichlids they make more sense to me lol

 

Was checking through Durbans gumtree and came across couple of IFS that are stocking them, some ads even show pictures of them.

 

@top dog: Cichlids make more sense to me too, because they're waaaay more intelligent!
No more giant razor-toothed tetras for us, then.


Young Red Belly eating Prima

They do eat dried foods if you don't spoil them!


They are skittish fish, not what you would expect.


@KEENAN: That is so brazen! Pictures an' all!
I wonder how other forum members feel about that?

Bro don't get tempted into keeping them, solid advice.
Other than bragging rights, they don't have much going for them.

Cichlid-keepers are almost guaranteed to get bored of them, quickly!

 

could not agreed more

 

Some die-hard cichlid fans here!

While they were growing, I fed them LOTS of worms, and they grew exponentially.



These fish are tough as nails, at one stage they went SIX MONTHS without a water change, and no incident.

 

except for the teeth nothing about them impresses.

 

They do give a new meaning to the expression finger lunch.

 

lol!
I would not DARE feed them worms by hand the way I do with the angelfish!