Thanks for sharing your expertise.

One of they died about 6 months ago, couldn´t find the cause.

Now the only one left prefers to be bee in hiding, hes around 10″ now, and I believe he began nipping the fins of one of the pacus, Not too bad, but he is not afraid of the size of the others. He is too fast.

Im not too concerned, but you have to be careful.

They are extremely handsome, and I believe that if they are kept at least in pair they will not bother anyone else, and you will have a good show every time.

As for fish shops — I was recently in a Petco (or PetSmart; I get them mixed up) where they were selling leoporinus. I told the girl selling fish that they should not sell those to the general public. I then told her my story. She responded by pointing to the sign under the tank, which said the fish only got to be 4 inches long. I told her that if you put it in a big enough tank, it’ll get much, much larger. But they don’t know and they don’t care. I know now and I’ll never buy one again.

And you have to understand: I seriously doubt whether any casual aquarium owner searches Google for information about fish before they buy them. I researched after the problem of the disappearing tank-mates began, after someone else advised me that leoporinus was “evil” (his word). My post here is just another warning to the folks who don’t know better.

I don’t have a tank to make a single fish happy. I have two tanks with two communities. Leoporinus isn’t a good part of any community.

I know pet stores can be misleading at times, and often people end up with fish bigger than what they can provide for.

Whatever reason you try to give for your negligence though, it is still your negligence. When typing “Banded leoprinus” into google, the first result you get is this one: http://badmanstropicalfish.com/profiles/profile1.html .

On the site the first line of text clearly says,

“Seen frequently at shops when small the Banded Leporinus is not a fish for the beginner. Stunning in color, it is a fast grower that has a mean streak to smaller fishes. They are fin nippers that sneaks up on its’ prey no matter what size. A super jumper the aquarium must be tightly covered.”

Right under that it says that the fish can get to be a foot long.

It doesn’t take a genius to put those two lines together, and realize that any fish smaller than a foot is potentially a meal for the leoprinus.

Don’t go as far as to say that shops shouldn’t sell these fish, they’re great for the hobby if you actually do your research.

By the way, your leoprinus chose to hide because though not a schooling fish, they prefer the company of their own kind, or fish with a similar body shape/coloration/pattern; a little research would have fixed that problem as well.

I just plain hated mine. Don’t miss him one bit. But every time we drive past that pond — just the other day, in fact — we speculate on whether he’s still alive in there, nibbling at the legs of unsuspecting ducks.