Hey All! New To Fish Keeping & Need Advise:)

[Ajones89]

Hi all

I have a fully cycled 25gallon tank, 205 fluval external filter, water levels are perfect, no problems there.
Added fish about 4 weeks ago, I have 6 tiger barbs in there and they seemed to be pretty happy, didn't seem to be nipping going on.
But I started to notice that they were all picking on one tiger barb all of a sudden & nipped a little bit off his lower tail fin off.
So as I'm new to this I went back to the aquatic shop & asked advice, he said to keep an eye on it & his tail would
grow back, but it hasn't at all because the others just won't leave him alone, the poor thing.

I have now put him in a small quarantine tank because after closer inspection, I realized that his tail fin was bleeding a very tiny bit.
He can still swim about and seems much more active now i have separated him from the bullies!
I have read that tiger barbs pick on injured fish, so should I just keep him apart until his tail grows back?

All advise welcome please
thank you!

 

[OldMan47]

I find that tiger barbs are pretty fish that I cannot abide having in my tanks.I have yet to see a truly peaceful tiger barb tank. The thing that happens with them is that they are constantly trying to establish dominance in a tank. If the tank is large enough, the tiger barbs should eventually establish a "pecking order" and just attack each other once in a while to test that pecking order. In a typical smaller tank, the attacks are unrelenting. In my 120 gallon tank, 6 tiger barbs only lasted about a year before the last of them died. In my book it was good riddance since they made a pain of themselves with the other peaceful fish as well.

 

[Ajones89]

I find that tiger barbs are pretty fish that I cannot abide having in my tanks.I have yet to see a truly peaceful tiger barb tank. The thing that happens with them is that they are constantly trying to establish dominance in a tank. If the tank is large enough, the tiger barbs should eventually establish a "pecking order" and just attack each other once in a while to test that pecking order. In a typical smaller tank, the attacks are unrelenting. In my 120 gallon tank, 6 tiger barbs only lasted about a year before the last of them died. In my book it was good riddance since they made a pain of themselves with the other peaceful fish as well.

Thank you for your reply
When I realized that they were picking on one, I thought oh god I wish I'd never got them!
But after I took the injured one out, because I thought there was something wrong with it, they have calmed down, they only nudge eachother every now
and then. Unfortunately the one I took out and quarantined died this morning I guess there must have been something wrong with it all along and the other fish didn't like it! Hope I have better luck with them now, because they are very pretty fish!

 

[Jenste]

your fish could also have died from the stress of being bullied then thrown into a new environment (QT)
was the QT cycled and matched stats to the original tank?

 

[Ajones89]

your fish could also have died from the stress of being bullied then thrown into a new environment (QT)
was the QT cycled and matched stats to the original tank?

Yh the QT was cycled & all was fine in there, tested it for everything (set it up same time as main tank just encase I had to quarantine something at some point), I put loads of hiding places in there for it, But true it may have just been stressed I just really wanted to try and help the poor thing, the others just had it in for it.

 

[Jenste]

problem is, now the barbs will have to figure out a NEW hierarchy - - these fish need to be kept in as large a group as you can fit into the tank to disperse bullying...which means, you will either have to up your numbers, wait for them to all die/be killed, or return the whole lot.

this is what happened to me a while ago - eventually I just took them back to the LFS for credit

 

[Ajones89]

problem is, now the barbs will have to figure out a NEW hierarchy - - these fish need to be kept in as large a group as you can fit into the tank to disperse bullying...which means, you will either have to up your numbers, wait for them to all die/be killed, or return the whole lot.

this is what happened to me a while ago - eventually I just took them back to the LFS for credit

At the moment they seem ok, so I will just keep a close eye on them. Since the other barb hasn't been in the tank they have been swimming around together, only nudge eachother now and then. If I were to get more how many would you recommend I get, because I don't want to overstock my tank? I have 5 Tiger Barbs at present.

 

[waterdrop]

My experience with Tiger Barbs (and I've had a few tanks of them when I was younger) has been the same as OM47's experience. Its very hard, even with larger numbers, to not experience rather severe attacks from them. Probably the best keeping situation for them would be a rather large species tank.

I count Tiger Barbs among the fish (there are fairly many in my opinion) that people find especially hard to resist (and suppliers find hard to resist supplying) because of their striking colors and patterns. There are any number of things with "tiger" and "shark" in their name that have this problem. Its ultimately a matter of choice whether one is willing to be one of the fishkeepers kind of out on this fringe of trouble, but I think its helpful here in the beginner section to try hard to describe these things to beginners, who may have no idea whatsoever what they're getting themselves in to!

I once stood in front of a PetSmart fishwall and counted tanks of fish appropriate for beginners freshwater communitites vs. fish that were not at all appropriate for beginners. Only a small number (less than one quarter) of tanks toward the left side contained beginner appropriate fish. The vast majority of tanks contained fish quite inappropriate in one way or another.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Ajones89]

My experience with Tiger Barbs (and I've had a few tanks of them when I was younger) has been the same as OM47's experience. Its very hard, even with larger numbers, to not experience rather severe attacks from them. Probably the best keeping situation for them would be a rather large species tank.

I count Tiger Barbs among the fish (there are fairly many in my opinion) that people find especially hard to resist (and suppliers find hard to resist supplying) because of their striking colors and patterns. There are any number of things with "tiger" and "shark" in their name that have this problem. Its ultimately a matter of choice whether one is willing to be one of the fishkeepers kind of out on this fringe of trouble, but I think its helpful here in the beginner section to try hard to describe these things to beginners, who may have no idea whatsoever what they're getting themselves in to!

I once stood in front of a PetSmart fishwall and counted tanks of fish appropriate for beginners freshwater communitites vs. fish that were not at all appropriate for beginners. Only a small number (less than one quarter) of tanks toward the left side contained beginner appropriate fish. The vast majority of tanks contained fish quite inappropriate in one way or another.

~~waterdrop~~

Thanks for your reply I did know what I was getting myself into to some extent, I knew they had a tendency to nip fins, but had no idea they could be quite as aggressive! The man in my aquatic centre said if I had 6+ they should be ok. But at present they do seem ok with the other fish gone, so I am just going to see how it goes.

 

[OldMan47]

You may well be one of the lucky ones. I know somebody has success with these guys or eventually they would no longer be seen in the LFS. I have just never been blessed with the ability to keep them in my tanks.

 

[Jenste]

to be honest, considering one only recently passed away, it is much to early to say that the aggression has worn its self out - - i still think you should either up the numbers or get rid of them - - otherwise your numbers are just going to dwindle down until you have 1 fish remaining

 

[FishStrings]

Your barb has rot after the attacks. The fin just doesn't heal, it gets infected by fungus or bacteria. Treat the tank.