I have Cherry Barbs in my 29 gallon tank for almost a year now. The males are bright red and have not lost color. I have 6 albino cory cats and 7 harlequin rasbora in the tank as well.
Javier spit out the Omega One Betta pellets until I started splitting them. The Hikari bio gold pellets are considerably smaller and he eats them just fine. He loves bloodworms and brine shrimp.
Welcome LeopardLady. I am relatively new to fish keeping (<1year) and have found the info and advice on this forum very useful. Much better to get your info here than at the LFS.