help with raising piranha fry

Hey all, I received two piranha from a previous owner after 4 years. After 1.5 months in my care, these interesting pets "blessed" me with many fry. I have been scouring the web for some documentation on how to raise them (ideally) and pretty much come up with you are lucky if you get fry in anything smaller than 300 gallons with multiple breeding pairs.

Anyway the HY is that I have set up a 20 gallon tank without any substrate (per one individual's recommendation) and minimal decoration and placed about 20 fry in the tank...I am aware of 6 to 8 surviving. I left 6 in my 55 gallon tank with the parents and they are all present, growing more than those in my temp tank, surviving off some kind of very small water worms I have never seen before (1mm long). I need some tips on raising them in general and more specifically feading them, as they are not touching crushed flake food or food for fry.

 

How large are the fry?

-Chelle

 

The fry are about 1.5 cm long now...I definately have 2 in a 20 gallon by themselves (put in about 10-15, but dont see them moving about), and 4 remaining in the parent tank...I figure that they are too small to be cared about by the parents and seeing as I left 4 or 5 in there and all are surviving, I decided to leave them there until they were larger. They are about 2.5 to 3.5 weeks old...any help you could provide would be excellent!

 

BTW I know the numbers don't match with the original post, but I believe these are more accurate numbers...just thought I would clarify

 

BTW I know the numbers don't match with the original post, but I believe these are more accurate numbers...just thought I would clarify

 

I don't know a whole lot about raising piranhas, but I think that at 1.5 cm, they should be big enough to eat thawed, frozen blood worms.

-Chelle

 

with a separate fry tank, I followed one person's advice and did not put substrate...do you know of any rationale for that besides maybe just keeping it clear so you can see what you are vacuuming, etc? Also, should you do more or fewer water changes? And lastly, with the blood worms, since these fry do not seem to actively search for food (just kind of roam around) do you know how one should feed them...for example, do you just procide a lot of food hoping they get SOME and then clean the tank more often? Thanks for all your help

 

If they're still alive, chances are they're eating something. Most likely they're picking at the food when you're not looking.

Since there's just the 2 little fry in there, you probably don't need to do water changes very often because of your water parameters, but it would be a good idea to remove the waste at least once a day just to make sure everything is nice & clean. And yes, that's exactly why you shouldn't use substrate. A bare bottom makes it easier to clean the tank w/o sucking up the fry. Plus if you use gravel and the fry aren't swimming really well yet, they could get trapped between pieces of gravel.

-Chelle