SILVER DOLLARS: Part I: What is a Silver Dollar?
© Clifford J. Aliperti
Now, onto South America and into the lakes and rivers we go!
The Silver Dollar is a rather harmless fish often ogled by unknowing fish store customers mistaking it for the notorious piranha. I want to qualify the word harmless and let you know if you have live plants in your aquarium you must stay away—they eat anything green! I’ve come across numerous articles stating that hardier plants such as mature Amazon Swords and bitter tasting Java Fern are safe. Let me tell you, I’ve tried them and they’re all salad to my Silver Dollars! Again, let me stress one of my main points in these articles; every fish is different. Your Silver Dollar may be different than mine in their tastes, these are animals, each specimen acts differently than another, but I have had seven of these shining beauties, all nearly three years old, and they’ve dined upon every plant I’ve tried keeping with them.
Why all the trouble identifying Silver Dollars and telling them apart from gigantic Pacus or carnivorous Piranhas (notice I said carnivorous, not vicious!). Well, they’re very similar fish when you get down to it. If you like reading about the science I recommend the link I have added called “Pacus/Tambaqui and Silver Dollars” compiled by Frank Magallanes. It comes complete with references and many photos to aid in telling these species apart. But basically, what you have here are all fish from the Cyprinid order, Characin sub-order, and Serrasalmidae family. So, when you run that far into similar classification, you’re going to find some similar fish. It’s the next step down where things begin to differ: Piranha are from the Serrasalmus genus, Pacu from the Colossoma (think colossal=big!), and the fish most often sold as Silver Dollars from Metynnis, Myleus, and Mylossoma. Mylossoma are the biggest of the three Silver Dollars at about 8-10” (think Mylossoma similar to Colossoma=big!). My seven silver beauties are mostly Metynnis, perhaps with a couple of Myleus slipped in there. And that’s as scientific as we’ll be getting here!
Now that we have established what a Silver Dollar is, I can talk about the care of them and easily refer to them as “Silver Dollars” throughout this article.
Silver Dollars are usually for sale at about that size, that of a silver dollar, and even as small as a quarter. They get to be anywhere from 4-8 inches in our tanks, but usually no more than six inches in captivity, while some species may grow even a little larger than eight inches in the wild. They are a deep-bodied fish, usually as deep in height as they are in length. Think Silver Dollar, while not perfectly round, these guys are close! They are a laterally compressed fish, which means that your Silver Dollar may be four inches tall, four inches long, and less than a half inch thick! So, while Silver Dollars can be sizable, they are by no means gargantuan.
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