Any advice fellow keepers?
- Thread starter JH23
- Start date
Personally I wouldn't try it.
Sound kinda like you were hoping/expecting a "yeah go ahead", instead you got 3-4 nos. You'll get mostly nos here. The only rule book in keeping fish is that of the fish. It's up to us to do our best from prior experience and experience of our brothers and sisters to do what's right for the animals. Whether you want to do what's right or not is up to you ultimately. You asked for opinions you got them some more passionate then others. You can't get ruffled when it's not the opinion you hoped for. Imo it will only take 1 successful try from the piranha for it to be over for the Oscar. Will that happen before the Oscar beats the snot out of the piranha, probably. Let us know how it goes, I'm in the not good for the Oscar group though.
oscars arent even that aggressive. if you said dovii or umbee or something maybe itd make a little sense. cichlids have no way of defending themselves agains piranha. if a cichlid were to even try to lock lips with a piranha itd seriously injure the cichlid.
even if a large fish can defend itself its still very susceptible to taking pot shots from other nippy fish.
the only thing i would think has a decent chance of survival would be armored catfish species.
even if you could pull it off do you really think youd enjoy seeing a stressed shredded oscar (or any fish)with chunks tank out of it sulking around your tank ?
if you have an idea of doing something extremely risky that could end really badly for an animal don’t expect other people to encourage you to do it.
mfk usually sides with more conservative stocking and tankmate ideas in general. most websites will tell you an oscar needs a 75 gallon most mfkers would say around 120.
the last reason why this would be a poor stocking choice that comes to mind is that youd be constantly dealing with injured fish so youd have to keep really clean water to not be dealing with bacterial and fungul infections.
even if a large fish can defend itself its still very susceptible to taking pot shots from other nippy fish.
the only thing i would think has a decent chance of survival would be armored catfish species.
even if you could pull it off do you really think youd enjoy seeing a stressed shredded oscar (or any fish)with chunks tank out of it sulking around your tank ?
if you have an idea of doing something extremely risky that could end really badly for an animal don’t expect other people to encourage you to do it.
mfk usually sides with more conservative stocking and tankmate ideas in general. most websites will tell you an oscar needs a 75 gallon most mfkers would say around 120.
the last reason why this would be a poor stocking choice that comes to mind is that youd be constantly dealing with injured fish so youd have to keep really clean water to not be dealing with bacterial and fungul infections.
theres no rule book but theres a very clear and definitive difference between bad and good fishkeeping.
Rules in fish keeping:
The fish are always right
Spend lots of money
Get addicted
The fish are always right
Spend lots of money
Get addicted
I have picture evidence of that point on my old phone. I got a Texas with my piranha, it didn’t last very long. One day I actually came and found the Texas missing it’s lips. A week later, a good portion of its upper jaw was missing. Just to anyone that says they don’t lip lock: they do, and it is a mess.
When I was a kid I kept a 7” RBP with a community of mostly SA fish including oscars and pacu, and even some blood parrots. It was fine for a good long time, fairly peaceful. I would drop in feeders every once in a while for the piranha and the pacu would ferociously hunt them down and eat them. Then I would feed frozen vegetables to the pacu and the piranha would love them.
when the blood parrots laid eggs, they became territorial. I guess the piranha crossed into their territory and the female blood parrot attacked the piranha, of course it defended itself and in that defence the blood parrot only had half of its face left. It was quite horrific to find a fish I thought was breeding, with most of its lips and one eye half missing. I was kind of traumatized but it was my fault entirely for trying to do it. This mix worked out for 6-8 months with no incident.
so not a rule book- but a rule of thumb is, it may work for a period of time, but anything can happen at any time. For all we know they got along until that female became aggressive with piranha.
this is real life experience not something I read on a forum wall or in a book. You can make your own decisions don’t need me to tell you what to do
when the blood parrots laid eggs, they became territorial. I guess the piranha crossed into their territory and the female blood parrot attacked the piranha, of course it defended itself and in that defence the blood parrot only had half of its face left. It was quite horrific to find a fish I thought was breeding, with most of its lips and one eye half missing. I was kind of traumatized but it was my fault entirely for trying to do it. This mix worked out for 6-8 months with no incident.
so not a rule book- but a rule of thumb is, it may work for a period of time, but anything can happen at any time. For all we know they got along until that female became aggressive with piranha.
this is real life experience not something I read on a forum wall or in a book. You can make your own decisions don’t need me to tell you what to do
Matteus
is right about anything can happen whenever.They may be fine for a long time, maybe forever, but is it worth the risk of waiting for disaster?
My lep bullied my piranha for the longest time. That didn’t last. Anyone wondering why the lep in my profile pic is missing an eye? It’s a miracle the piranha never finished him, he died first.
I wouldn’t want to watch any fish suffer a the jaw of a piranha the way I foolishly did.
this is really surprising but i cant help but wonder if you really had a piranha considering theres so many species that look almost identical to a rbp and it ate vegetables. seems like piranha relatives are commonly mislabled after all my first school of silver dollars turned out to be piranhas.
Petco likes to mislabel...
Piranhas do have vegetarian tendencies. Mine ate plastic plants.
Piranhas do have vegetarian tendencies. Mine ate plastic plants.
