Tropical Fish Forums

[...ben]

[ceci9293]

I was going to say 7 tiger barbs myself as a non-tigerbarb-keepin'-guess.

Kuhlis need a soft substrate since they like to burrow. Heather K should be back from wedding-y type stuff soon and she's a loach guru. I think you should wait on her input. Kuhlis also prefer a well-established tank over a new set-up -- can't remember if you've said how long this tank's been up and running with fish in it.

[kb46]

A suggestion - you might want to reconsider your colour groupings with a school of 7-9 fish. 1 albino &/or 1 green might look more effective amongst a school of oranges than equal numbers of each.

I mixed my small school ( zebra danios with equal numbers of the different colours and I found the schooling effect is overshadowed by the mix. It just looks messy to me! and I wish I'd gone for all the one colour variant.

Kylie
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[Ariaanna]

Definitely don't have only one of a color. I tried that with my tigers, and the "lone" colors got left out the majority of the time. When I had even numbers of each, they schooled much better and there was significantly less bullying of the "odd-men-out." With other fish you could probably do such a thing, but tiger barbs are a bit. . . . feistier than most. If you give them something to discriminate one from the others, it will probably be bad. One fish significantly smaller than the others will be picked on and probably killed, because he will probably be too small to handle the dominance nibbles that occur to establish a firm pecking order. One fish signficantly larger than the others will probably peck everybody else ragged every time they're not in a perfect school (which will probably be fairly often in such a small tank.) I did suffer from both problems. The first problem resulted in the smallest fish getting pecked to death before I could remove him or buy more fish his size (my lfs is inconsistent about stocking tiger barbs at best, and getting one small fish out of a 55 gallon tank is very difficult.) The second problem was solved pretty quickly by hunting down and purchasing 2 other "extra large" barbs to give the big guy a run for his money. So far as I've found, even numbers of colors with no particularly discernible size differences work out best. I imagine since your tank is smaller than mine, dominance squabbles and temperament issues will be more serious, so you should probably try to stay on the more "safe" side of the road if at all possible.

Please keep in mind that everything I've just said is based on my experiences with tiger barbs, and that I really do love them, you just have to take a few more things into account for them than you normally would with, say, tetras. If anybody feels anything I've said is fallacious, feel free to counter it with your own experience, but please consider the old adage "Better to be safe than sorry" when posting your suggestions.

HTH!

[kb46]

Thanks for the warning,Ariaanna, I'll file it away in memory for if I ever choose some tiger barbs. I agree - better safe than sorry.
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[Devon Greatwolf]