# Red Belly Behavior



## SavageSerrasalmus69 (Aug 3, 2010)

My juvenile RBP's spend most of the day hiding and all of them appear to have pieces of their dorsal and tail fins missing. One of them has a bite in its abdomen, but not a piece missing. Is this normal? What can I do to discourage this nipping and biting or is that a lost cause. I've read alot about the piranha, but wanna make sure these guys all pull through! The RBP's are all about 2" long at present and I only have 3 of them in a 55-gallon aquarium with plenty of driftwood and live plants in the tank. I also feed them twice a day - mostly brine shrimp and bloodworms right now. Leary about feeding them feeder fish as my last attempt to keep P's ended in a real bad case of ich and I lost all of the P's in that batch. Trying to get it right this time around! Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Savage


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## Potato (May 19, 2010)

SavageSerrasalmus69 said:


> My juvenile RBP's spend most of the day hiding and all of them appear to have pieces of their dorsal and tail fins missing. One of them has a bite in its abdomen, but not a piece missing. Is this normal? What can I do to discourage this nipping and biting or is that a lost cause. I've read alot about the piranha, but wanna make sure these guys all pull through! The RBP's are all about 2" long at present and I only have 3 of them in a 55-gallon aquarium with plenty of driftwood and live plants in the tank. I also feed them twice a day - mostly brine shrimp and bloodworms right now. Leary about feeding them feeder fish as my last attempt to keep P's ended in a real bad case of ich and I lost all of the P's in that batch. Trying to get it right this time around! Any help is appreciated. Thanks!
> 
> Savage


Sounds pretty normal to me although as far as i am aware 3 is not a great number to keep, ideally you need more than that. if the temperature is high that can cause more aggresive behavior so try dropping it a bit.. thats just my opinion though. reds heal amazingly quick one of mine had a bite on the back which sounds similar to yours, was healed in a week and only left a slight mark.


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## Piranha_man (Jan 29, 2005)

It's normal for juvie RBPs to nip at each other.

I'd remove or limit the hiding spaces however... they only increase aggression in my experience.

See if you can feed them just a couple more times per day.
They're getting a bit large to be eating brine shrimp for much longer... and definitely omit feeders.

See if you can get them to take a high grade flake food like Tetra Min and/or tiny pellets like Baby Hikari Gold.

Now for the routine questions:

What are your water parameters? (This really doesn't have anything to do with the situations you posted... just wanna know...)
What is the temp in your tank? (Higher temps can increase aggression.)

Welcome to the hobby and to the site!


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## TheSpaz13 (Apr 9, 2010)

It's normal man. It will stop as they get larger. Mine did the same thing and still do now and then and they are like 4.5 inch. Make sure they are well fed too, when mine were that size they ate a shrimp or two a day and if your underfeeding them it might turn into more than just aggression. Do you know if it's one fish that's the aggressor? Or is one fish getting picked on more than the others?


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## LS1FDRx7 (Mar 6, 2007)

From my experiences of having different group of piranha shoals, as long as you're raising more than a solo piranha by itself.. you're going to have at least one aggressor in the pack. It's normal for groups of piranha to bite each other's tail. It's even normal for them to gang up on the weaker one and kill him also. I've seen it happened. Maybe not now, but down the line as they grow bigger/older. It could be beacuse of food, tank space, getting rid of some energy, alot of things.

Returning to Piranha after nearly 2 years of being gone.


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