This has been a long time overdue! A new fish hobby blog has been needed and there will be coming more in the future, that’s a promise! I’ve had a lot going on with my health as most of you know, and I’ve been struggling with income since I can’t work full time anymore. Therefore I’ve been working on a website (UpNorth sportswear.com) with sports clothing line that has a focus on organic and eco friendly products. So yes, a lot has been taking my time.
https://upnorthsportswear.com/collections
Now back to the topic at hand!
One of the most gorgeous fish and interesting, you can have in an aquarium! In my opinion, anyway. And yes, I have Red-bellied piranha. It has a red belly and it gets more red, the more the piranha thrives in its environment. It also has, what looks like, gold dust on its body. It’s a very striking and under appropriated fish in the hobby.
This is a mythical and feared fish. It’s the meat eating monster in the Amazon rivers and it swims in schools. But, not all things are true about this very beautiful fish.
Piranha is in the family of Tetra. So it’s basically a very large Tetra. If you ever feed Black Widow Tetra or Colombia Tetra or equivalent, you know what I’m talking about. The feeding frenzy is typical for Tetras. And as species of Piranhas are Tetras, the have the same finding frenzy they’re known for. But it’s more noticeable since they are much larger than “normal” Tetras, in the Amazon region.
A Piranha in the wild can grow up to 3 feet (90cm)! Yeah! You read it right! And when that are fully grown, one bite from an adult Piranha is as much as 16 cubic decimetres or 0.56 cubic foot. That’s 1.6 litres or 0.423 gallons.
The reading frenzy comes to live when 20 or more individuals are present at a feeding opportunity. Let’s the say there are 200 Piranhas in a group, and they start to eat. Feeding frenzy is massive. But since, every Piranha bit a chunk of 1.6 liter or around 0.42 gallons in one bite, they only get one bite per fish. But since there are 200 of them, it will be done in seconds. Hence their reputation.
But what do they eat? Do they eat humans? No! I have my hand in the water of the aquarium cleaning the algae of the windows, and the Piranhas simply tries to avoid me as much as possible. Piranhas eat meat from smaller mammals but mostly it’s other fish and insects falling into the water. There have been stories of piranhas eating a goat in seconds, and I’m not disputing it to be true, but it’s a rare.
Piranhas live in packs. Like lions or wolfs. What happens if a non member of the wolf family or lion family tries to join the group? It most likely will get killed on the spot. It’s the same with piranhas.
So if you already have Piranhas in your aquarium, how do you introduce newly bought fish to the group?
A group of Piranhas have a certain smell. They can sense the smell of each other. And if a Piranhas doesn’t smell like the rest of them, it will get eating by the group.
How do you go about this issue?
When you come home with your new Piranhas, you poor them into a bucket. Then you take a few cups of water, from the existing aquarium where you have your Piranhas. Then you repeat this every 15 minutes for a 2 hour period. What does this do? This process makes the new Piranhas swim around in the same water that the already established Piranhas are in. Their smell is in the water. This smell will transfer into the water of the bucket, making the new Piranhas take upon the same smell as the old once have. This will increase the new Piranhas chances substantially, not to be eaten by the old existing group, but rather be included into the group.
There you go. I hope this have been helpful for you and encourage you to get more of these beautiful fish!
As always, thank you so much for all your support! Please, REMEMBER to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to this blog!
Remember to explore the website upnorthsportswear.com! “The eco & organic choice. We make your wardrobe collection stand out”! Link below.
Cheers!
The Aquatic Studio! 
Leave a comment