What ever happened to Don Miguel?

[bornl33t]

What is a dicklist?
We have Mods here too.
This thread is close to a trip

LOL pwned


This whole thread cracks me up. You all apparently hate him so much ( I have no clue why, he's more hilarious than triangle ever was ) yet you dedicate a thread to him that's now 3 pages long.

Honestly, if he annoys you that much then put him on your ignore list. You all get -100 cool points for being STUPID.

Go ahead and flame away.

[p8ntbal4me]

ummmm. I dont think I have any pics. I tried to take some, but the glare on the tank was horrible.

I had 4RBs, but I got a bad batch of feeders, and it killed 2. (Im blaming it on the food as the water is in perfect condition according to the chem levels. I threw away the rest of the feeders, and found out later that week that the 10-12 dozen the guy at the pet store had died.)

The 2 I have are ~ 4-5" and are 8mo old. I just recently purchased a 180 gal tank and am in the process of getting it set up (I have to lay tile first). Talk about heavy. the tank alone weighs 400lbs. I think with water, rocks, stand, and tank finished will weigh ~ 2500lbs. I am putting it on a concrete floor in the basement.

I am a little worried to put 10 1" RBPs in with my 2 5" ones, and am kinda wondering what I am going to do with them. I wish I knew someone who would take care of them, and let me start over with a bigger tank.

Breeding piranhas huh? How do you do that?

I have a solution to my feeder issues like you have had.

I have a hospice tank setup in case of emergencies. Since I dont keep having issues with my fish I was going to dump it out just because it was a waste of space. So what I did was downsized it to a 5 gallon tank under my 55 gallon stand, treat the water for Ick with "Rid-Ick" on the feeding days, then drop the feeders in the 5 gallon tank and let set for 3 hours.

Then I take the fish out of that and put them in the tank. Its 1 more step,. but it cleans the feeders and since the 55 gallon is always getting weekly water changes and the water is clean,.. I dont allow time for parasidic things to harm the fish.

You know what you can do for the change over of the smaller-newer RBPs into the older ones?? Set your 180 tank up and get your larger fish settled in. Install a hospice barrier that seperates a portion of the tank off for the smaller ones. They will need about 1/3rd of the tank (Im guessing you have a 72" x 24). As they get into the 4-5 month mark, and depending on the type of barrier you install,.. you can create openings for the smaller RBPS to use but not the larger ones. After 5 months you should have no problems. You just have to watch how they interact. If they school together right off then your okay.

The other thing you can do which does work (but you can loose some of your smaller fish) is to raise the stress levels of the tank by a small amount. This causes the fish to be less aggressive. I heard this from another person I know whom merged 2 tanks of fish, he only lost 1 fish this way. Personally,... I would go for the barrier.

Another thing you dont want to do is use feeders for the larger fish that are the same size as the smaller ones. Down sizing the feeders when they are all in the same tank can prevent confusion when they "fury" and feed. I feed mine "Large Feeders" from Petco ( I get a deal cause I buy in bulk ) If I was to introduce small RBPs into the tank now they would not last 5 minutes. When I do my change over Im leaving my 55 set up only to get the fish to school and group. After that Im using the 55 for breeding.

Breeding Im kinda new at. Piranha are VERY difficult to tell which sex you have. Most people can not tell unless they have a still photo of it and look at the fish more than 4 times after feedings. All you have to do it increase the size of gallons per mated pair you have, feed them as much as they will eat, weekly 25% water changes, keep tank conditions ideal and stable for at least 4 months solid. If you do this,.. they will breed. Breeding mates are signed by playful tail slapping at very fast paces, non-violent but hard bumping of the face to the side of the body with mouth open and no biting, other fish in the area of the same sex will get slammed at high rates of speed for no reason and at random (his is a nice way to tell after you know which fish spawned the eggs because you can tell what the other fish is by who they got attacked by) <---- taken from some Amazon dude with a Phd in Piranhas and other nasty fish.

Good signs of your RBPs stress and happiness levels are found by how red-ish the anal fin is. The darker and red-ish,.. the better. Belly color is important too, but can change due to anger so not always true readings come from the belly. If your fish are mid-water level in the tank, out in the open, mouths open, and lots of color,.... they are in PRIME condition.