SILVER DOLLARS - PIRAHNAS IN DISGUISE!

although many fish dealers say that they eat mostly veg, well today i proved that they eat mostly anything they can fit in there mouths! before the silver dollars and mosquito fish(gambusia) wer livin happily until one day i bought some paradise fish and they decided to start nibbling the mosquitos! then one of them became very weak and floated in the tank looking dead then a silver dollar came and finished him off! it was so cruel watching a live fish being swallowed whole[:-weepn] .so the lesson learnt is never always believe wat the dealers say and use ur common sense e.g. a big fish at some stage will sometimes think about eating the bite sizes. and silver dollars r very big eaters considerin i just fed them bread veg and fish flakes 1 hr ago! but still i still think that they only ate it coz they fought it was dead,no wonder i never see dead fish in the tank no more and no wonder the tank looked so empty!
update:i've gotten a better pic of these fishes. macro seems to work better when taking photos of fish!

This is true with all fish.

How many time have u seen a pleco, or a sucking loach eating a dead fish...

This is because vegitable matter is low in protine and when these fish get a chance to get a good meal of high protime, meaty food they love it.

So how do the gambusia like living with the siver's then, i find there very scatty if not left peaceful?

Alan

they left each other alone but i think they ate some of them coz i had 3 in the tank 1 small male and 2 females and 1 female and male dissapeared after a while

Hi jazzer,silver dollars get quite big and anything that fits in their mouths is fair game,Alan is quite right about the protien issue,chopped earthworms might help or frozen beefheart.Regards,Ian.

yea i took the size thing in consideration but they seem to eat 24/7 on anything! and i have never seen them pooed once so its almost like everything they eat goes into them and they absorbevery bit of it. its a good thing that there shy as well coz wen i feed my fish they only get 5 secs to each as much as they can until the alarm goes off for the silvers and they just eat it all before ur eyes! such big eaters! now there just semi adults(6-7cm) i daren't imagine wat they wud b like wen there adults!

Huge and massive eaters,I hope youve got plenty of food for them!Regards,Ian.

lol i have i think. i rarely feed them fish food now they r so big i usually feed them bread and veg now

Bread and Veg??

Sorry but you should never feed bread to fish, this is very poluatign to the water, and if heed to much this can put a faty deposite around the heard of fish, causing more problems.

Blanching lettice and shelling pea's is always good for these fish.

Alan

i had a shoal of 8 adults in my 6ft tank and they looked stunning. but they grew so big they frightened my other fish so i had to sell them. jazzer is right in the fact they do nothing but eat. i used spinach, frozen from the store then defrosted in the microwave, then dropped straight into the tank, went down a treat. also peas, lettuce and some frozen foods.
which dollar do u have? as there are several types.

well i noticed the pollution problem ages ago but i fort they just liked it so much i've give them it as a treat but i've learnt sumthing new now thx. im not sure about the species but i think i have a odd one out because all 4 have like sparkly scales on the top half of the body but this new one i bought is just plain silver with no sparkly bits? i duno how to tell the difference, i tried google images but both m. hypsachen and argenteus look the same lol? any ideas how to identify them keith?

my only method of identifying them is baensch atlas. from your excellent photo i think they are metynnis argenteus. tis is the most commonly found one in shops and wholesalers. not sure about the scale difference though.

lol excellent, its out of focus! speaking of photos, theres nothing to do so i might as well take photos of my fish in my spare time

lets see some here then.

i love tetras but im wary of some of the species, because they are all related to pirranhas. if you look very closely through a magnifiying glass you can actually see the teeth. some species are ok but i stay clear of things like serpae, and phantoms. let alone the bigger stuff.