In Jun-Jul 2015, I bought a small ~2"-3" false piraiba aka Brachyplatystoma capapretum from Aquarium and Reef Center, Cape Coral, FL, for $90. Overall, my experience with this fish has been poor and difficult. As opposed to true piraiba, this fish is very skittish and prone to darting and swimming around wildly hitting anything and everything in its path, no matter the tank size. It's done it in 240 gal regularly and I even saw it once in 4500 gal.
From reading around and online pictures, it seems this phenomenon is almost invariably characteristic to false piraibas raised in captivity. Even Enrico Richter's specimen had a badly curved snout. I did come across 1-2 possible exceptions -
SirCatfish
and
Jonathan_G
My approaching the tank as well as tank mates seem to trigger this phenomenon, sometimes merely placing food in the tank does the same thing. It often or usually ends with the fish running high speed head-on into a wall and stopping then. It has never broken its snout or jaws badly all at once but rather its snout suffered enough blows that gradually it curved down and reached a pretty significant degree now as you will see from the video.
Despite the craziness, the fish fed ok for me, preferring baitfish, cut and whole, just not growing nearly as much as other keepers report. Mine added on ~7" in 1.5 years, while others say theirs reached 1.5'-2' in about the same time frame.
It has now been in 4500 gal for a couple of months and had done well until maybe a week ago. Somebody has been biting its tail too much and it stopped eating. I plan to give it 1-2 weeks and if things don't improve, will have to pull it out back into one of the 240 gal. Gambling, I know. But it's rather miserable in a 240 gal I have seen from experience and I have no other tanks between 240 and 4500 gal.
My guy at ~4"-5", still intact.
Mike
SirCatfish
fish, seems rather intact:
Enrico's fish with a bent snout:
From reading around and online pictures, it seems this phenomenon is almost invariably characteristic to false piraibas raised in captivity. Even Enrico Richter's specimen had a badly curved snout. I did come across 1-2 possible exceptions -
SirCatfish
and
Jonathan_G
My approaching the tank as well as tank mates seem to trigger this phenomenon, sometimes merely placing food in the tank does the same thing. It often or usually ends with the fish running high speed head-on into a wall and stopping then. It has never broken its snout or jaws badly all at once but rather its snout suffered enough blows that gradually it curved down and reached a pretty significant degree now as you will see from the video.
Despite the craziness, the fish fed ok for me, preferring baitfish, cut and whole, just not growing nearly as much as other keepers report. Mine added on ~7" in 1.5 years, while others say theirs reached 1.5'-2' in about the same time frame.
It has now been in 4500 gal for a couple of months and had done well until maybe a week ago. Somebody has been biting its tail too much and it stopped eating. I plan to give it 1-2 weeks and if things don't improve, will have to pull it out back into one of the 240 gal. Gambling, I know. But it's rather miserable in a 240 gal I have seen from experience and I have no other tanks between 240 and 4500 gal.
My guy at ~4"-5", still intact.
Mike
SirCatfish
fish, seems rather intact: Enrico's fish with a bent snout:
