# What kinds of fish can live with ---



## Coolie

Hey everyone i'm new here, i wanted to know if i caould get sum help cause i'm gettin ah few Piranahas adn i wanted to know if i could also putother fish with them like Id sharks or plecos with out them gettin eatin cause i've seen what they do to those feeder fish lol and yah

IF anyone could help i would be greatful thankz ah million


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## Polypterus

Alot of fish can be kept with Piranaha, But that depends entirely on the tank size,
How many fish, feeding regime , age of fish, enviornmental conditions,
Blah, blah, blah

Can it be done yes, But it's tricky and conditional.

My advice to you, Just keep them alone


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## sabotage

exodons and a pleco!!!


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## Coolie

Ok thanks for dat and yah its gunna be close to ah 50 gallon and on't 2 piranhas i think there would still be ah lot of room u know


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## Guest

Mr.Harley had oscars with his piranha.

I can't see how it's done, though. I tried adding a big bluegill ten times the size of my Gold Spilo to the spilo's aquarium. That night I found the big bluegill hanging vertically in a corner missing his tail and part of his dorsal fin, looking miserable!


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## MR.FREEZ

i say nothing







if you want something to look at thats purdy

you awt to get another tank

im not sayin it cant be done, i just dont think the average tank can do it, i say you neeed

something pretty fukn big with lots of hiding, not to mention you got to be very

dedicated to it more so than the average

hobbyist, i havent read enough to convence me other wise, every thing i read says "well sad day

today tank mate xx died", so nothing should be mixed with piranhas


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## stayin yellow

you may be able 2 put other fish with the piranha


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## stayin yellow

eventually tho when the piranha get bigger not many fish will survive being in the same tank


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## Coolie

HUmmmm its all so interesting







well thanks ah lot and what dou guys think about sandy bottems ??? is dat better then gravle?


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## Innes

no fish, not even other piranhas are guarenteed to be able to live with piranhas - the fish that are most likely to survive are fast and small or thick with armour and that hide away all the time, but even these fish end up eaten most of the time.


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## acestro

I have a feeling this is a thread worth pinning. It comes up quite a bit from that 'other' side of this website.


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## lemmywinks

there are never any guaranties with piranhas. i have kept many fish w/ my piranhas though. neon tetras, baby convicts, adult convicts, firemouths, cory catfish, plecos, and rosies LOL. remember that it all comes down to the idividual fish.


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## Polypterus

acestro said:


> I have a feeling this is a thread worth pinning. It comes up quite a bit from that 'other' side of this website.:laugh:


Definitly should be

Variable conditions can have variable results,
It is not impossable to keep piranaha with other species, 
Key though is in the enviornment and way they are being kept,

Most of these experiments though never work.
a captive enviornment is like a desert to these fish they are always
starved and never usually adapt to community settings


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## Innes

acestro said:


> I have a feeling this is a thread worth pinning. It comes up quite a bit from that 'other' side of this website.:laugh:


 how about we come up with a neat & tidy version?


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## n0bie

Welcome to Piranha fury








i had a 15" pleco with my 15 red bellied piranhas and they didnt even touch it ( if you try this , its not 100% secure if its work for you , if your lucky it work if your not theyl kill it ) just try and then you see , it might cost you a coupla dollars but what the hell its fun to experiment with the tank


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## Polypterus

Innes said:


> acestro said:
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> 
> 
> I have a feeling this is a thread worth pinning. It comes up quite a bit from that 'other' side of this website.:laugh:
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> how about we come up with a neat & tidy version?
Click to expand...

 Good thought Innes


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## smb

I've always had good luck keeping a male M. chipokae with rbp's but the only thing is, the chipokae sometimes kept the p's in hiding.


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## MistaFishPimp05

It all depends on how hungry/aggressive they get. I have 5 baby Convicts that were intended to be feeders living with my P's right now.


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## BKtomodachi

With bigger p's small fish are often ignored.

Member Hareball has a huge rhom that he keeps with all sorts of small schooling fish, and he plans to keep it with angels in the future.


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## acestro

Polypterus said:


> Innes said:
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> acestro said:
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> I have a feeling this is a thread worth pinning. It comes up quite a bit from that 'other' side of this website.:laugh:
> 
> 
> 
> how about we come up with a neat & tidy version?
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> Click to expand...
> 
> Good thought Innes
Click to expand...

 Tidy away, I'll just pin it for now.


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## Methuzela

I have succesfully kept a giant danio (very fast) and several red eyed tetras with my three Red Bellies. I also keep zebra danios in there (they're fast too but they get eaten sometimes, SOMETIMES) and guppies, they are too small for the P's to even bother with, but they've gotten surprisignly big eating crush up jumbomin pellets.

so to all those who say its impossible to keep anything with your P's you're wrong.







. and i dont have like a million gallon tank with a million places for the fish to hide. I have a thirty gallon with some plants. Just get fast small fish. I also have had some gold tetras in there for a while too. Try tetras i heard they are the best to have with P's. let me know if anyone has any similar succes.


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## mykil73g

i keep some guppies in w/some rbp's as dither fish, and once in a while they'll take a fat female, other then that they do fine.


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## mykil73g

I also tried keeping some hydrolycus armatus with the piranha's but eventually one was eaten. I had to get rid of the 3 remaining hydro's...







i thought about giving exodons a try ....


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## k45mac

i got 2 6" rbps in a 30 gal with 3 tiger barbs I intended to be feeders..

it's been almost 3 weeks now and the ps dont even look at the tiger barbs.. which is pretty cool since im startin to get attached to the little buggers

I'd say try these guys out, only $0.88 a pop up here and pretty cool if ya ask me, I always see em peckin at the remainings of the nightcrawlers I drop in before I fish out the uneaten food..


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## jiggy

everything in a piranha tank eventually becomes lunch..


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## SMITZ71

I tried my P's with a red devil/Midas and a Tyre track eel......The Red devil/Midas fought back and the battle wounds were too much.....The eel seemed to be fine and I never saw any confrontation with it amongst the P's......Came home last night and 3 inches off its head was missing....2 fish dead in one week from the P's







...I dont wanna hear the I told ya so INNES


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## yorkshire

I used to keep neons with my 3 r.b.p's with only the ocasional casualty, it took them about 5 months to eat 10.
I put 20 neons in a well planted tank with my Rhom on 2nd sept. I've got about 4 or 5 left. He's eaten 15 in a week.(as well as his regular food)
I dont think he was hungry, just didnt like to share his tank, even with something that wouldnt even count as a mouthful!!


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## MR.FREEZ

*not even plecos*


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## elTwitcho

Some people have good luck with crayfish. I didn't and mine is dead


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## unknown

I definately would not put an ID with your piranha, and I wouldn't even advise you keep an ID shark period. ID sharks get very big and require a very large tank which I doubt anyone would be willing to spend their money on a tank that big, that is of course if you want to house it properly. I have seen ppl keep piranhas with oscars but I would introduce both at a young age and make sure that there is more than ample space probaly an additional 10-20 gallons to make sure that there are no disputes are aggression between both.


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## MR.FREEZ

heres some stuff from *OPEFE* that should be a must read


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## Vip

What about the larger more agressive cichlids? Jaguars, Trimacs and Dovii? I would say N.Beani but there the most agressive cichlid there is, it might cause to many fights in the tank.


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## ReDraGon->

Well if u really wanna know what kind of fish can Live with your Ps , NOTHING eventually ANy fish u house with your Ps is a Potential meal, even a fish Bigger than your Ps can end up like This Fish


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## Judazzz

In the two-and-a-half years of piranha keeping, I've always kept other fish with my piranha's.

I started out with a pleco or two, like most piranha keepers do, and they lived for almost two years before they died of starvation (the piranha's ate all their pellets too: I never realised that until I found the poor sob's [sunken] belly-up







)
I still do keep a lot of bottom dwellers with both my Redbellies and Manueli (L-Number pleco's and Raphael Cats - see my website for details: link in my signature) - I tried to take into account the needs of both piranha's and bottom dwellers, and so far I've only lost a small number of catfish to my piranha's, most of which died of starvation, some due to predation.
If you decorate your piranha tank in such a way that it contains lots of hiding places, decor etc., there's a good chance catfish will thrive: keep an eye out on their food intake however, because you don't want to make the same mistake I did: catfish they can also die because of lack of food (due to direct competition with the piranha's) - you can arrange your tank to make it perfect for bottom dwellers and piranha's, but nothing goes without food...

As far as free-swimming, active fish go: their chances of survival are much smaller than with pleco's or raphael cats. Tetra's, cichlids, cory cats, barbs, I've tried them all, and although some managed to survive for as long as a year, sooner (usually) or later (rarely) they all end up as lunch. Bottom dwellers too, but their more secretive and nocturnal lifestyle definitely gives them a big advantage over daytime-active, free-swimming fish.

The only way to find out how your piranha's react to tank mates is by actually trying: when I first got my Manueli, the general concensus was that it would kill everything in its tank, fast at that. But due to the success with my reds, I had to try, and now, well over a year (and a bag full of Euro's) later, I more or less figured out what works and what doesn't - by now, I keep about 150 bucks worth of bottomdwellers with him (L-Number pleco's, a Raphael Cat and a shrimp or two), and that combination seems to work pretty well (no victims since I started with the experiment end February this year). I don't have illusions those catfish will die of old age, but so far so good.
My Redbelly tank is basically the same story: finding out through trial-and-error what works and what doesn't. And in that tank too I have a number of expensive exotic pleco's, as well as some more common pleco's and a couple of Raphael Catfish. This too seems to work well, and the last time I had to net out a dead fish was more than 6 months ago). But here too: nothing what is active during daytime, and which is actively swimming around, last longer than a few days at best.


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## yorkshire

Judazzz, ever tried cucumber for your plecs? my reds used to eat the sinking pellets but always left the cucumber alone









Just an idea, if you've had a few die from starvation









and just an update on my rhoms compatability with other fish, since the 2nd sept he's eaten 54 tetras/guppys/tiger barbs. only one tetra survives at the mo, but his time will come,


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## Judazzz

yorkshire said:


> Judazzz, ever tried cucumber for your plecs? my reds used to eat the sinking pellets but always left the cucumber alone
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> Just an idea, if you've had a few die from starvation


Well, the last Pleco died of starvation more than 12 months ago, so I guess I figured out the problem in time. I do feed them egg plant from time to time, but my Redbellies seem to have developed a taste for veggies as well, so it's not working that well








Thanks for the suggestion, though


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## inked82

ive got some tiger barbs in with my 36inch rbp's and they all seem to get along fine (most of the time) but there so small and fast it doesnt seem worth the effort of the chase to catch them


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## Speedy

I've had 4 exodons and a pleco living in a 200gl with 8 rbp's for at least 6 months now.
I originally had 8 exo's but I travel a lot and I guess my p's got hungry.
Since this loss, I always make sure my p's are very well fed before I go away.
The problem with keeping exodons is that you can't even think of adding another "fast" fish into the tank (danios, barbs, neons, etc.) as they'll tear them up as soon as they hit the water and eventually kill off any newcomers.
The plus is, that I never have to feed my exo's as they eat whatever the p's eat and occasionally, they will take a bite or two out of my p's fins for a snack.

The pleco doesn't even get noticed unless he's being used as a "scratching post" when my p's get itchy....They seem to find the pleco more satisfying then the rocks and rub up against him to get relief....No they don't do this all the time.


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## sasquach

id say a large cat fish of some description e.g. walking catfish and plecos. also you can keep some exouns with them.


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## Puff

i had a shrimp in my tank that was fine up until last week. for some reason he decided to venture out from his log. and i dont think he made it back.

i kept a school of tiger barbs with my 5 RBPs. they snatched one the first night. then the rest were fine for a couple of weeks. then it eventually got down to 3...after 3 or 4 weeks. so i took those out, and moved them to a different tank, because i started to like the barbs.

they arent exactly cheap here tho. like $3+ for one. i only get them on sale, like 3 for 6 bucks, even tho that still sucks.


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## piranha1991

it can be done at the moment i have a red tail shark and a cray fish with my piranhas and im soon to be gettin a royal pleco or a zebra pleco


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## JWS

[/b]Happy Holidays to all the Piranha Lovers first, I just got 12 1" red belly P's about 2-3 weeks ago. They are growing pretty quick and there is this one out of the pack that is twice the size of all the other fish. He has killed 3 fish so far and I have a bad feeling that I am going to end up with maybe 1 or two fish. I know that my water is fine because I check it THOROUGHLY and there is no nitrates or ammonia and PH is at a 6.4-7.0 which especially Red belly P's can thrive in that water. I personally think that he is the biggest one and I guess only the strong are going to survive as they grow. If you got any facts please let me know.


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## the_crazy_canadian

hello there.. new member here. i baught last year 3 R.B.P's at 1" cause i thaught they were really neat, had them in a 10 gallon tank.. i loved the way they ate and such. well they are a year old now and i have them in a 50 gallon tank. they are beutifull, i got a real log for them thats like a hollowed out tree, its neet because thhey can swim right thru it but its open in spots so you can still see them. but i got a little bored with the wasted space in the tank, so i added a pleco for algea (heard they can hide good) and i got 9 Neon tetras.. i am impressed with the tetras, iv only lost 1 because for soe reason he was retarded and never schooled with the others. but they all swim around with thier brilliant colors while the piranhas are inactive... as soon as the piranhas become active however the tetras pretty much dissapear... like , i have a hard time finding them.. they hide behind a rock i set up or in the crusted up ship bell in the water.. as soon as the piranhas go away again, the tetras come out.. i think they can live in there pretty well, im sure there will be the ODD loss but thats expected.


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## water_boy173

so is it safe to say that if you keep your piranhas well feed you can at least have a bit of a hope of keeping something else with them....?


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## MR.FREEZ

waterboy173 said:


> so is it safe to say that if you keep your piranhas well feed you can at least have a bit of a hope of keeping something else with them....?


i still say no, cause if territorial aggression, plus if people try to

keep their piranahas well feed they would probably be over feeding

which isnt good for your fish


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## Judazzz

MR.FREEZ said:


> so is it safe to say that if you keep your piranhas well feed you can at least have a bit of a hope of keeping something else with them....?


i still say no, cause if territorial aggression, plus if people try to

keep their piranahas well feed they would probably be over feeding

which isnt good for your fish
[/quote]
I agree...
Feeding of course plays a role (a very hangry Piranha will kill quicker than one that is fed regularly), but the key factor here is understanding the needs of both your Piranha's and their tank mates, as well as understanding their behaviour.
If you add bottom dwellers or secretive fish and do not add hiding places, so will end up with dead bottom dwellers. If you read up on bottom dweller care and behaviour, and make sure the Piranha tank also suits the needs of the bottom dwellers, they may have quite a comfortable life (I know the Pleco's I keep with my Redbellies have a good life: if not, they wouldn't be active, colorful, always hungry and free of fear).


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## water_boy173

this is what i got from this: convicts, oscars, tetras, guppies, plecos, catfish, sharks anything else?


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## MR.FREEZ

waterboy173 said:


> this is what i got from this: convicts, oscars, tetras, guppies, plecos, catfish, sharks anything else?


i still say nothing for certain, piranhas eat fish so all those are

gonna end up food or killed through territorial aggressition

sooner or later


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## The Predator

i saw pics of piranhas with silver dollars

Off topic: yay my 800th post!


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## Powder

the only fish that can live with piranhas are fish you want to be food
i have lost 4 reds to cannabilism alone 
they eat each other and they have razor sharp teeth even if they are just playing with the other fish they could bite a hole in them 
so your answer is NOTHING ever at all and if it lives for a bit its just cause they arent hungry they will get hungry and eat whatever ou put in there 
you name it it wont make it unless its another red they will tolerate each other but thats it 
if densly planted and very very densly planted ghost shrimp may be able to make it anf live givin enough hiding places and the fact that they are breeding casue some will get eaten 
unless you can find a fish that never ever moves for any reason everything will be either breakfast lunch or dinner


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## Guest

If you had to choose to eat between a steak or spinach you would choose steak Almost everytime. But sometimes you feel like having spinach or steak wasn't around and your hungry... you'll settle for spinach before starving to death. Thats not taking to account what's easier or more convenient to eat.


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