My RBP's Tankmates

[ballinouttacntrol]

I like how no matter how many times someone tells people that they've had other fish in their piranha tanks people will swear on their mother's grave that it will end badly. Or they'll make up excuses like "it blends in or doesn't move much or is only active at night"

I just fed my 8 reds some pellets and shrimp and my pleco took a piece of shrimp and they've yet to take it back from him. He also constantly swims on the glass and in front of them and they pretty much ignore it. Sometimes he'll sit on the glass facing down and you'll see the Ps looking up at him.

And no, the pleco is not significantly bigger then them. He's maybe got an inch or two on them in length.

 

[Evilking]

Hey nice tank you have!
I have a rbp also and his tankmates are a pleco and a cory. The pleco would even try to get stuck on the pacu as he use to do in the glass lol unfortunately the pacu don't like the idea lol. There's no way to know if your pacu will or will not attack other tank mates but i know a guy who have a pacu for years and a pleco and they did just fine!
Take care

The poster is referring to RBP as Red Belly Pirahana(sp) and not Red Belly Pacu.

When I had Pirahana(sp) the only fish I could keep with them were silver dollars and Pacu's. Every other fish end up being dinner.

 

[JoeDizzleMPLS]

I like how no matter how many times someone tells people that they've had other fish in their piranha tanks people will swear on their mother's grave that it will end badly. Or they'll make up excuses like "it blends in or doesn't move much or is only active at night"

I just fed my 8 reds some pellets and shrimp and my pleco took a piece of shrimp and they've yet to take it back from him. He also constantly swims on the glass and in front of them and they pretty much ignore it. Sometimes he'll sit on the glass facing down and you'll see the Ps looking up at him.

And no, the pleco is not significantly bigger then them. He's maybe got an inch or two on them in length.

because people very rarely, if ever, have long term success... just because someone has a pleco that survives for a few months without being eaten, it doesn't mean that i'm gonna start recommending that everyone starts adding other fish in with their piranhas.

i hear the same thing all the time, people claim to have had success with adding a pleco or some other fish, and then a short time later, they tell me it ended up being eaten.

 

[assortedsorts]

I have 6 rbp's had em for about a month and a half?
They are about the size of a credit card now
Anyway, I have had a spotted raphael cat in there the whole time...raph cat is about the same size as the p's..there is also the tank that is also known as a pearl gourami.
On the occasion I feed the p's feeders the gourami often leads the hunt and will scare the feeder out of hiding for the p's...also there are 2 black tetras in there I am experimenting with (been in for a week now).

 

[ballinouttacntrol]

because people very rarely, if ever, have long term success... just because someone has a pleco that survives for a few months without being eaten, it doesn't mean that i'm gonna start recommending that everyone starts adding other fish in with their piranhas.

i hear the same thing all the time, people claim to have had success with adding a pleco or some other fish, and then a short time later, they tell me it ended up being eaten.

Hmmmm, let's throw out every person that's tossed in a pleco or oscar or other random fish in an already established tank (chances are they'd been feeding their piranhas feeders in the first place and none of us should be surprised that additional fish thrown in were eaten too). We know from experience if they tossed in another P it'd most likely would share the same fate.

That's probably 60 percent of the cases alone. Anyone under the age of 20 should also not count? Yeah there's responsible teens but how much could you really care about fish keeping and taking care of your investments at that age?

Do we ever look into the situation surrounding the fish getting eaten? IE tossed a fish in an already established tank, tank size too small, terriotial fight with an adult piranha, bare tanks, skipped meals?

I understand that we're trying to protect people but i just wish there weren't a half dozen people saying IMPOSSIBLE!!!! everytime someone shares a success story. Why not acknowledge both?

I didn't decide to keep a pleco in my tank (both times the pleco was there before the reds) until after reading about a guy who kept piranhas for 8 years and kept moving his pleco from tank to tank as he kept upgrading tank sizes. The same pleco spent several years with his reds and black rhom before he got rid of them. That information helped me make an educated decision that people seem to want to erase from the history book as if no one has ever successfully done it.

 

[JoeDizzleMPLS]

i never said that nobody has ever done it... but "success stories" are extremely rare, and i don't think you can look at them and say that you can replicate the situation and guarantee success, because there are just too many variables to consider.

the few times that i have heard of some degree of success, nothing special was done, the person just happened to have a fish that happened to survive for a decent amount of time.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that there isn't anything that is going to guarantee success for the long run, most of the time it is just a crap shoot. for every person that pulls it off for a decent amount of time, there are probably 25 people that claim success after 6 months only to lose their fish a short time later and 100 people who lost the fish almost immediately after they started their "experiment".

i don't know why some people are able to pull it off for a bit and i think people would be kidding themselves if they thought they could explain it... the bottom line is that when people try these "cohabs", they are attempting to set their own rules and make the fish follow them, and that is never going to amount to success every time.

 

[ballinouttacntrol]

Yeah, that's fair enough. You're not one of the half dozen screaming IMPOSSIBLE!!! everytime someone tells a cohab story.

 

[TimTheBadass]

I'm still amazed every time I go to my local aquarium and see a large pike cichlid and motoro stingrays swimming around with the piranha's. I guess it's due to heavy feeding and a massive tank.

 

[carlo1988]

here's my story, iv been keeping fish for about 2 years now. everything from SA/CA's cichlids, africans and last was a planted tank. i got a great job about six months ago the involves me working out of town for 15 days at a time. i didnt have the time to look after my planted tank and i was starting to get bored of the whole planted thing. iv always been intrested in piranhas so i bought 4 rbp's while i still had my planted tank. the planted tank had everything from harlequins, glolights, neons, cherry barbs and some siamese algea eaters about 40 fish total. not having anything to do with the boring little guys i just threw the rbp's in the tank with them and let the rbp's go to town. 2 days later all the little fish were gone except for the SAE's so its been about 8 months now and the rbp's pay no attention to the SAE's at all. i can put 15 feeder gold fish in and the rbp's will eat them all but always leave the SAE's alone. i also have had a red crayfish in with them for the 8 months and they dont touch it. has anyone else had any luck with tankmates for there RBP's or am i just lucky? heres a couple pic's

what plants are those on the left and right of your tank i love tem im talking about the big ones that grew to the top of the tank

 

[eatyoualive]

Hey nice tank you have!
I have a rbp also and his tankmates are a pleco and a cory. The pleco would even try to get stuck on the pacu as he use to do in the glass lol unfortunately the pacu don't like the idea lol. There's no way to know if your pacu will or will not attack other tank mates but i know a guy who have a pacu for years and a pleco and they did just fine!
Take care

my pacu is fine with my pleco