msneed

Hi everyone I have been feeding My Piranhas Live and frozen foods like feeder gold fish and frozen beef heart They don't seem to be interested in anything else, But feeders are not all that healthy and beef heart can be exspensive, the two types of Piranhas are red bellies and Black I've tried to feed flakes, pellets and other dried foods but they don't even notice it or recognis it as food, how can I get them to try other foods?

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sirdarksol

Piranhas require quite a bit of training to get them to take anything other than live/fresh food, and it's never guaranteed.
However, it doesn't have to be beef heart, or the garbage feeders you buy at your LFS.
You can start your own feeder tank by raising mollies, guppies, or swords (all are livebearers and breed like rabbits). The important thing is to keep the population down to healthy numbers (no overstocked tank) and to feed them high quality food.
In addition, you can try different meats and seafoods (piranhas eat mostly fish in the wild, so focus on fish). Try to find a small co-op or natural food store in your area and ask them if they ever have meats priced to sell quickly, or if they sell stuff that's been in their freezer too long as pet food. One co-op near me sells their meat for super cheap the day before it expires, and a specialty meat supplier in Hudson, WI sells stuff that's been in the freezer too long as dog/cat food ingredients. The stuff is a bit freezerburned, but he sells it for $1 a pound. Even if you cut out the freezerburned parts, it's still an excellent deal.

Aside from this, you can almost always get catfish and a couple of other kinds of farmed fish for pretty cheap. These could be the normal meal, with the others as treats to vary the diet and make it healthier.

Welcome to Fishlore.

Neville

Wow! Cool Fish msneed, they r very Nice!

You can try shrimps, they really love shrimps, i had some baby piranhas for few months, they used to eat everything, pellets, beef, shrimps, worms, frozen food, everything! and they eat a lot.

Unfortunately Piranha has been banned in our country!

sirdarksol

Now the piranha would be one of the worst invasive species to have take over a river.
Zebra muscles and water milfoil are bad enough, but those won't eat a person once they run out of other food.

msneed

I'm not sure why the comment about Piranhas being invasive as it relates to rivers, lakes etc. I am also an avid fisherman who loves the inviroment and pride myself on being responcible, my post had to do with food alternatives for Piranhas, but thanks anyway.

sirdarksol

Neville said that these fish are banned in Bangladesh. Nearly always, fish are banned in a particular region because they can thrive in the natural waters yet are not indigenous. So I guessed that piranha were banned in Bangladesh because they could live in the water (it would make sense). I was just responding to his post.

With regards to feeding, check out my first post.

COBettaCouple

Welcome to Fishlore.