Pirhanas beginner guide... PLease help???

I have 3 very very small RB Pirhanas in a 20 gallon tank any beginer tips such as food... i was told to feed them half a cube of frozeen brine shrip twice a day any other food tips, and frequences keep in mind there are only 1-2 inchs thanks very much :y_the_best:

 

I know some Pirahnas like beefheart

 

i feed my 4inch pirana about three commets

 

Feeder fish aren't the best food. The ones you buy at the LFS are kept in really horrible, filthy conditions and are almost guaranteed to have diseases which they will transfer to your fish. You could breed your own, but considering the expense, time, & effort involved in that and the vast array of other foods available, it's really not worth it IMO.

Piranhas, like all fish, should have a staple of good quality pellets. They are specially designed to meet all the nutritional requirements of the fish they are designed for. Then as treats, just to mix things up a bit and give them some variety, you can feed them things like beefheart (but no other mammal or poultry meats), shrimp/krill, crickets, mealworms, & other insects (but be aware that the ones around your house/yard could have pesticides on them).

Also, I hope you know you're eventually going to need around a 80 - 100 gallon tank for those 3 fish.

-Chelle

 

Pirahnas beginner guide answer

Mine are very small, smaller than a dime, and they LOVE black worms. it is very comical to watch them eat them too! :lol:

 

PIRHANAS 8) i have 4 rbs right now to start you have to feed them every day at a minium because they WILL eat eachother at this small of a age... give them flaked food or pellits till they are 2'' + then go to a butcher and beefheart and cut it into 1'X1' cubes and put it in a tuppa wear contaner and freeze it then throw it in raw every day or 2. give feeder fish as a treat!!

-Justin

 

I like to feed mine shrimp from the supermarket, he's about 5" now and in a 55 gallon tank. Also a common misconception is that you shouldn't feed them feeder fish... this is totally a misconception I believe. You DO need to pick feeders that look very healthy. Look at the fins (they shouldn't be frayed), look at the scales (no excess slime, red spots, white spots, black spots, scales missing), look at the behavior (is it active?), look at the eyes (should not be cloudy). Even if the fish has some sort of a disease, if your Piranha is healthy and not under stress... the chance for it getting the disease is slim to none.

 

Just because fish look healthy doesn't mean they are healthy and parasite free. I've bought perfectly healthy looking feeders and put them in with my perfectly healthy oscars and they ended up with ich and other parasites (including worms that burrowed into their heads). It's really not worth the risk considering there's tons of better, safer, healthier alternatives out there.

-Chelle

 

Good post Chelle. I would have to agree that with most carnivorous fish a quality diet of pellets should be established with occasional treats such as the ones mentioned by Chelle before. My firemouths are eating hikari gold pellets with frozen shrimp/bloodworms as a treat. Just out of curiosity what others treats could i feed firemouths? -tl

 

Basically, the treats I mentioned before are good. Also you could try some veggies. I occasionally feed my africans and goldfish frozen mixed veggies (carrots, peas, lima beans, green beans, etc). Just thaw them in the microwave. I'd like for Sherbert to eat veggies as well, but when I try, she just gives me dirty looks and won't eat them.

-Chelle

 

do you think that these fish don't encounter diseased fish in the wild??? and yet they survive... Choosing only prime stock is important, and yes there is alternatives to goldfish, I perfer rosey reds, but to be honest with you, if the fish isn't stressed its immune system can easily stay ahead of ich... ich is a paracite that actually resides in every fish, its thier immune system that controls the paracite.

 

Actually, most wild caught fish do have parasites. They also generally don't live as long as captive kept fish. That's why it's a really bad idea to introduce wild caught fish to your tank w/o quarantining them for several weeks first.

That's a misconception. Once you get rid of ich, as long as you don't introduce more infected fish, you're not going to get it again.

And I wasn't talking alternatives to goldfish, I was talking about alternatives to feeders in general. Rosey reds aren't any healthier than goldfish.

-Chelle

 

yes the fish may not be INFECTED with ich, but it still has the paracite... why do you think stress induces the sickness? Ich doesn't just pop up out of no place suddenly. Its on the fish, and when the fish is stressed, the immune system is hindered, and the paracite becomes uncontrolable... I would have to disagree with you on wild fish living shorter lives related to disease. The amount of fish that die at the hands of aquarists are much more substantial than wild deaths, at least disease related... At UWSP we are doing a study on wild fish and mortality, one out of 25 fish that have died in our current data has died of a disease, while predation took most of the younger fish (species depending), and our oldest fish are a batch of 22-24" largemouth bass that are around 14 years old according to thier scale rings. And our average fish (if you do not include preditor deaths) is 5 years old which is a lot better than the average aquarium fish. Now say that we did the same thing in Aquarium data, I believe most of the deaths in aquariums are due to disease or poor water conditions unlike our wild fish data. Lets face it, a dominate fish in a water system is very unlikely to become stressed and die of disease. The answer to why wild caught fish added to an aquarium die quicker is simple, the fish are stressed in that tight, closed environment. Leading to disease.
The reason I choose rosey reds, is goldfish tend to be very "messy" fish, you are generally more at risk to bring in bacterial diseases with the goldfish than rosey reds. Also qt the rosey reds also reduces the chance of infection.

 

Okay. So what exactly do ich meds do then? Since you say the parasite is ALWAYS present, then apparently the ich meds don't kill the parasites. What do they do?

I was talking about properly cared for fish. Not goldfish in bowls or oscars in 10 gallons. Obviously those are going to sway the averages. Properly cared for oscars can live 15 - 20 years in captivity. I'm willing to bet wild ones don't live that long.

But you said previously, that "you DO need to pick feeders that look very healthy . . . Even if the fish has some sort of a disease, if your Piranha is healthy and not under stress... the chance for it getting the disease is slim to none." So if the chance of getting an infection is slim to none, then why do you bother quarantining them? Unless of course you think there IS a good chance of infection which contradicts what you said previously.

-Chelle

 

"Life, finds a way." If ich meds work killing every paracite then how do you explain reoccurances years after having the same fish in the tank??? And Yes I was accounting for people who don't know what they are doing... because most people don't. And a well cared for fish will obviously live for a long time... it doesn't have to worry about finding a meal, or swimming away from preditors. Piranhas in the wild are preditors and scavangers, they eat dying fish, some of these fish have disease, but the disease rate is fairly similar in piranha as with any other fish in the amazon, even thoush several piranha will eat off the same fish carcass. There is always a "chance" of getting infection from the things they eat... but a healthy piranha's immune system fights disease very well... it is adapted to it, it NEEDS to be to survive in the wild. Yet the immune system can always be over-run. You pick an unhealthy fish to feed your piranha and there is a greater chance of disease, of coarse. And qt just makes sure they don't have anything amiss. People have dismissed premature deaths from disease because of something the fish ingested such as a sick fish... but often this is not the case... most paracites are site specific... meaning they can't roam through the body after being ingested, they just plain die. Ich is a skin disease... not an internal one but an epidermal one. And that is why (since the rosey red is in the water for about 20 seconds) I am really not concerned with disease in my preditory fish... After 20 years... I haven't lost a piranha to disease... and I have used feeder fish for years... IMO a healthy fish is very unlikely to get sick.

 

t_chelle... you've given a lot of good advise on this forum... but I believe that you are wrong on this one... I am a fish caretaker for a lot of aquariums in my area (24 totalling more that 2500 gallons) and I have encountered a lot of diseases in my 5 years of doing this work. The least of my disease problems come from Piranhas, Cichlids, Knifefish, Jacks, Gars, and Oscars, infact... now looking at my records... I have 10 aggressive tanks and have treated 3 diseases in these tanks (none of which was related to the food that was given). Each one is fed live fish an average of once every two weeks (they are qt'd and then fed to the fish during this time). This is over 5 years! And as mentioned above I always pick prime stock for feeders looking over every fish carefully. I've also consulted other places like P-fury and have gotten mixed answers about feeders, I think this indicates that stressed fish are often the cause of the disease and not the feeders.

 

well, i am siding with t_chelle on this one.....most fishstores dont give you prime-health feeder fish, and most but not all places could pretty much care less about the feeders health and conditions.

 

Other than for personal enjoyment of watching the feeders being consumed they have absolutely no nutrotional value for the fish, well barely but thats besides the point. I think that Chelle is right and ich doesnt always reside in every fish. I dont even think feeders should be given pellets and occasional beefheart or whatever else is better. ALSO yes the fish may not be INFECTED with ich, but it still has the paracite... why do you think stress induces the sickness? Ich doesn't just pop up out of no place suddenly. Its on the fish, and when the fish is stressed, the immune system is hindered, and the paracite becomes uncontrolable. Like she said then what do ich meds do?Thats my standpoint. -tl

 

tski22, i like the way you put the ich explanation in there :y_the_best:

 

I really don't feel like arguing since I don't think anyone is going to change anyone else's mind, but I'd just like to add that I have NEVER had a reoccurance of ich after the initial treatment unless I've added new fish. And believe me, my fish have gone through some stressfull times including power outages, broken heaters, moves from tank to tank, removal from tanks for redecorating, and aggression from other fish. If ich was always present, they most certainly would have gotten it during one of those times, but they never did.

-Chelle