Idea for a race of fish people

[Maggot]

I'm planning to create an entry for the current quest which features a race of aquatic piranha like beings  that hail from my ''Eshal'' setting. Like real piranhas they tend to be highly anxious creatures which occasionally devour each other as well as other living things they encounter .  However, I also want them to be sentient creatures (albeit dimly sentient) who regard their propensity for eating  sick or wounded  prey as a sacred obligation to keep the eco-system running; their habit of dining on the weaker members of  other races ensures that only the strong will survive and that the waters will never be polluted; this had mdse them monsters in the eyes of their foes but they see themselves almost as environmental stewards. Is this a plausible idea? I’d love to hear your feedback.

[Pariah]

It sounds plausible, and I actually like the idea of a "misunderstood" race that "is only helping."

[Strolen]

Are they individually sentient or more as a group/mob sentience? Individually, it may be a crazy mixed up fish world, but maybe if they were more in tuned together like a hive/school type mind it would be easier to put together. Help explain how they travel, maybe suddenly the entire school of them would turn on a few weak like they finally determined were holding back the community, they all identified a threat and as a group would suddenly turn and descend on it etc. Actually, maybe I am just thinking kinda of Little Nemo and getting directions. Hmmm. Like it though, but maybe a hive mind with different voices answering depending on the question. Nemo school of fish with their own agenda and strength to carry out could be dominating if they chose to do something crazy.

[Maggot]

Yeah, I was thinking in terms of the fish being controlled by an individual hive-mind. However, like you said, they should have some indivdual capactiy to send information to each other. However, just like with real pirahnas, the hive-mind is a bit fractured and rudimentary in comparision  to the of certain other creatures due to the fact that every member of the shoal is well aware that it can easily become a meal for a larger and more ferocious shoal mate. Do you think it's possible to pull this off?