The spotted piranha can hardly be described as a fish for the average aquarist. It is a ferocious blood-thirsty cannibal that should be housed in a big aquarium of its own. Having taken care of the accommodation, it should still be handled carefully, little specimens will give a finger fairly a nip and larger ones can really remove a piece of flesh.
In their natural waters, the piranha shoals are justly feared. It only requirements the taste of blood to set the shoal into a mad frenzy of attack. So fierce is the attack, and many the shoal, that it is said that they can decrease fairly big animals to a skeleton within minutes. The piranha is well equipped with razor-sharp, wedge-shaped teeth that cut into flesh quick and cleanly.
Spotted piranh is one of the two species accessible to the aquarist. It has a silvery body with, a grey-green sheen, sprinkled with numerous dark spots. The anal and caudal fins are dark.
The other species S. spilopleura has a dark greyish-brown body peppered with silver spots, along with a dark band via the eye to the gill cover.
Neither of these species has been bred in captivity.