Piranha's in a community tank?!

[Zilla556]

Hey Everyone, I'm looking to setup a community tank with 3-4 red bellies and various species of small fish such as tetra's, tiger barb's, and maybe some cory/otocinclus catfish. The tank i'm looking to setup will be 75-100 gallons with plenty of hiding space.

I've seen a few black water tanks on youtube that were setup like this. One of which said the tetra's even bred in the tank! Thought that was pretty cool.

So I'm wondering if anyone here has done this and had success?
If so did you start them off together when the P's were young or did you wait until they were fully grown?
As for food would getting them on Hikari pellets be best?

Any insight is much appreciated!

Shooting for something like this:

 

[tlindsey]

Welcome aboard

I know some have success with Cardinal Tetras but it would be risky with anything.

 

[killzmke]

it works if there is enough space and you regularly restock the dithers. the reds will slowly pick them off. the bigger the piranhas the better too. if you have large p's (ime) they are less likely to use all the energy to chase down such a small meal. I had black skirt tetras in with a 10" Rhom. it worked but every once in a while I had to buy a few more.

 

[Pacz11]

Looks awesome if you don't mind feeding expensive feeders.

 

[Zilla556]

Thanks for replies and the welcome!

I agree with you guys, setting up a biotope like this is extremely risky. Odd's are some of the smaller fish may get picked off eventually if not instantly. I'm going to be cautious and wait until the P's are almost adult size. Along with being on pellets. After that I'll slowly add in some cheap tetra's/catfish and see what happens.

Will update next month on where i'm at!

 

[Deadliestviper7]

If u have other fish in other tanks u can breed them and throw excess fry fish into the piranha tank,many will be eaten eventually but some will survive if u provide sufficient hiding places

 

[Zilla556]

Update: Picked up some decent sized P's from the LFS and added them to the tank with smaller fish. For the first few weeks everything went well. No signs of aggression towards the .5"-1" sized fish. But after I added a few more smaller fish it set them off on a feeding frenzy. They killed pretty much every fish in the tank. There are now only 4 tiger barbs left in the 75 gallon setup.

Looking back it may have been partially my fault because i didn't have enough hiding space the p's couldn't get to. Also i should have quarantined the fish that set the feeding frenzy off because they didn't look too great. Perhaps that played into it, not sure.

Anyway here's the current setup!