Tiger pacu

Care at a glance

Overview

The tiger pacu is a small, calm pacu for a roomy tank with strong flow and robust tank mates. It is a step up from the easiest fish.

Caring for the tiger pacu

A single tiger pacu needs at least 46 gal (175 L), with more room for a group. Give it plenty of open swimming space. A layout of smooth rocks, driftwood and a sandy bed with a good current suits it far better than a still, heavily planted tank. It may sample soft plants.

Keep the water at 72 to 82°F (22 to 28°C), with a pH of 6.0 to 7.5. Give it strong flow and clean, well-filtered water. The tiger pacu leans herbivorous, so feed vegetables, algae wafers and sinking plant-based pellets, with occasional frozen foods.

Keep a tiger pacu singly, or in a small group where there is space. It is generally calm, but it has a habit of nipping scales from larger, slow fish. Aquarium keepers report this scale picking, which a few of its relatives share.

Its scale nipping makes it an unsafe choice for a mixed community with big tank mates. Pair it instead with robust fish of a similar size and temperament. It is not known to have been bred in home aquariums, so there is no reliable spawning record.

Good to know

The tiger pacu is a stocky, deep-bodied characin in Serrasalmidae, the family of pacus and piranhas. Its blunt teeth are suited to grazing rather than the shearing bite of a piranha.

In the wild

The tiger pacu is native to Brazil. It lives in the clear, fast waters of the Xingu and Tocantins-Araguaia river systems, where they run through savannah country. These are warm, oxygen-rich rivers over rock and sand.

Common questions

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