dead rbp / water change

[TF2]

i just came back from a weekend trip last night to find one of my rbp dead and half eaten. i left on friday night so it died sometime between then until sunday night. since i do not know when it died it could've been friday night and the water could've been polluted since then. i did a 15% water change last night but and would like to do another 15% tonight or would that be too drastic?... what's the most i can do w/out affecting the fish's health because i want to be thorough and get every piece of piranha meat...

i feed them every other day... last ten times were raw shrimp. i remember reading that they want variety which i do give them off and on. (danios, tetras, tilapia, scallops.. other white meat fish). i hope they did not kill the rbp in search of variety but rather the rbp was ill? i ended up not feeding them when i got home because they were probably already full from their friend.

 

[p0w_yangz]

natural selection at its best

 

[tbonewarrior]

Welcome to piranha keeping... This, unfortunately, is one down-side of these fish, at least in my experience with them.

 

[ballinouttacntrol]

i love how nobody answered your question. lmao. Great help guys. You can do a much much larger water change then that. The beneficial bacteria lives in the filter media and on the surface, not the water it self. Just match the temp as close as possible and use a dechlorinator (prime recommended).

Piranhas aren't a real sensitive fish to changing water conditions

 

[kevinfleming21]

good advice from ballinoutofcontrol, I have done HUGE water changes with Oscars who have the relatively the same tolerance.

 

[kenya27]

i've found that frequent low percentage water changes are best but yes you can do another 15%... if anything just do one every other day. I do 20% changes every sunday with great success for many months now.

 

[Astus]

^^ Like ballin said a lot of members on this site do 50% water changes every week or even twice a week so you should be fine doing more now. Also, It could possibly be that you feed them every other day that when it came feeding time on their feeding day and you weren't there they were hungry and went to cannibalism. But that seems like a short time to cannibalize. There could have been many factors imo such as territory dispute, hunger etc.

 

[ballinouttacntrol]

How big are the piranhas btw?

I perfer more frequent small water changes myself but if the purpose is to turnover the water in a short amount of time, one 15% water change every week doesn't serve the purpose yaknow?

 

[Foster]

I do 20% every 4 days or so and have had no issues but when I got the poor things I got them home to realize that the last owner had not been conditioning the water at all for 3 years.

 

[BRUNER247]

Like balln asked how big are they?also tank size, decor? Would help narrow it down more.I think its a territory thing.sometimes I think there's no reason other than they are fish with teeth, that's what they do is eat fish. N the waterchange question.what about discus breeders that change their water daily, sometimes multiple times a day?maybe Matte can chime in on this as he bred discus.discus are a lot more fragile than our meathead piranhas.