What kind of carnivorous fish would be good pets?

Dustfinger: What kind of carnivorous fish would be good pets?
Are there any meat eating fish that you could have as pets that aren’t too big, inexpensive, and don’t require special care? No special care as in, you could just throw a goldfish in there a couple times a day and watch them devour it. All I really know about are those Oscar fish they have at PetCo, but those get pretty big.
You have to special order Piranhas and they’re aren’t cheap. Bleh.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Redrum (ɯnɹpǝɹ)
PIRANHAS

Answer by Endler Guppy
There is no point. None that get big are apart from Betta’s.

If you throw in a few defenseless goldfish, your doing harm for the fish your feeding them too! Feeder goldfish normally have diseases which infect the fish eating them. They are very low in protein. So you might as well have fed the Oscar or what ever flakes.

I’d suggest getting a 5 gallon tank.

A heater

Slow/weak filter.

Silk plants

Gravel

AND A BETTA!

Now you have a choice if you want to feed it flakes, pellets and freezed dried blood worms.

OR

Live insects, live blood worms, live daphina, live brine shrimp and baby guppies or mollies. (Mollies are larger) You can get the fry from pet stores for free probably. All other live food is probably like really cheap.

Hope I helped.

P.S Betta’s NEED a heater NEED a 5 gallon tank and NEED a filter!

Answer by Gary C
Most fish are carnivorous, but if you want one that will eat live goldfish, it will necessarily need to be a rather big fish, by aquarium standards. Fish only eat prey that they can swallow whole, so it would need to have a mouth big enough to fit the goldfish in.

Oscars will often eat goldfish, but goldfish are a nutritionally deficient diet for Oscars, and feeder goldfish tend to pass diseases on to fishes eating the goldfish.

Piranhas need to be kept in schools (the more individuals, the better), and they get rather large, so you would need a very large tank for piranhas. Many people find them disappointing, because they hide most of the day when they aren’t eating.

You might like an Amazon Leaf Fish. It stays still, pretending to be a leaf, until a smaller fish swims near. Then it suddenly engulfs the other fish in its extendable mouth. It eats smaller fish, likes guppies, rather than fish the size of goldfish.

Any fish, though, is going to require some care. Fish that eat other fish tend to be messy and produce a lot of waste, so you would need a good filter, and to make at least weekly partial water changes.

Answer by Hoolagal
depending on the size of tank you are after, freshwater pufferfish come in several forms and will eat live food … the even have teeth :O)

Answer by Ianab
The problem is the difference between what you want and what will actually work.

You want a fish that eats a couple of small goldfish each day? That means that there are 2 dead fish in the tank each day!!. Sure they get eaten, but that just converts them to fish poop and ammonia. So you need the tank space, filtering and water changes to cater for that level of waste. Imagine just throwing 2 dead fish in the tank each day hoping the filters keep the water clean? Thats what you need to be able to do. Means a 75gal tank and serious filtering, so you may as well get an Oscar.

Next issue… you have to buy feeder fish. OK they are pretty cheap, and NASTY. Usually ridden with various pox and Ich. So now you have your neat carnivorus fish getting sick all the time.

Personally I have an Oscar and dont bother with feeders. If you want to see a carnivore, get a big tank and just feed him bits of fish, beefheart and pellets. Dare your buddies to hold a strip of raw fish over a tank with a foot long tame Oscar in there. It’s more fun that watching them eat feeders.

Ian