Monster in the Basement

When we rented our home in Alexandria, it came with a bonus feature: the owners had a large 50-gallon aquarium in the basement. There was an enormous fish living inside, and by enormous, we mean a good 10-12 inches in length. The owners said he was a pacu, which we had never heard of before. Thinking Henry might enjoy having an aquarium, we asked them to leave the tank. The plan was to find a good home for the pacu (i.e., a pet store) and get some nice guppies and tetras for the tank. However, in the months that passed since we moved in, Henry grew attached to the monster fish in the basement, and now he seems to be a permanent feature of our home. It seems a large fish, even one as ugly as the pacu, can be pretty interesting to a two-year-old: because he’s so big, Henry can more easily follow his movements.

Once we realized that the pacu was here to stay, we started doing some research on him (or is it a her?). It turns out the pacu is a South American fish and a cousin of the piranha. Here’s what we learned from Wikipedia:

Pacu (Portuguese pronunciation: [pa’ku]) is a common name used to refer to several species of South American freshwater fish that are related to the piranha, which are also kept as pets in aquaria. They are popularly thought of as herbivorous. Their teeth, which may look similar to human teeth, are used to cut through vegetation and crush seeds that fall into the water. Pacu and piranha have similar teeth, although the difference is jaw alignments; piranha have pointed, razor-sharp teeth in a pronounced underbite, whereas pacu have squarer, straighter teeth in a less severe underbite, or a slight overbite. Additionally, full-grown pacu are much larger than piranha, reaching up to 30 kg (60 pounds) in weight, in the wild.

Apparently pacu also are quite tasty. In doing our research, we learned that they are known for their sweet, mild flavor. Apparently they are now being raised on commercial fish farms as a good “food fish” (because they grow so large, eat almost anything and are easy to maintain). In particular, we noted several recipes for grilled pacu fish ribs.

For now, we have no plans to grill up our friend in the basement. Oddly, we haven’t thought of a name for him. He is simply known as “the fish” or (for Henry) “fishie.” Since the cat’s name is Vici, perhaps we should call him Caesar. Below is a picture of a large black pacu like ours: