Looking for opinions

[salemchic]

My tank was recently taken over by velvet, and being somewhat of a beginner, I ended up not realizin it until it was too late. Now that i have no fish, I'm starting over. I'm working on getting my tank up and running again, and i'm thinking i want rosy barbs. My tank is a 10 gallon tank. Can anyone tell me if they would be ok in there? And if so, about how many should i get? Any help/ideas is greatly appreciated

 

[sylvia]

Rosy barbs grow to 3 inches and are active shoaling fish. If you are looking for a community set-up, this is a bad choice as you could only keep a max. of 4 rosies in a 10 gallon and no other fish.

An alternative would be cherry barbs which are smaller. Or, better yet, golden dwarf barbs. You could keep three cherries and a dwarf gourami or get 5 golden dwarf barbs and 2 male guppies for added color. Another option would be a small shoal of harlequin rasboras or some dwarf corydoras catfish with a pair of honey gouramies. There are many many options. What sort of tank are you looking for with this?

 

[salemchic]

I don't have community tanks. Just the 1 fish and maybe a very small algae eater to keep the algae levels low

 

[sylvia]

So are you looking for something like what you already have then? Rosy barbs are shoaling fish so that wouldn't work but many other options do exist... What kind of algae eaters do you keep?

 

[salemchic]

Sorry it took so long to reply...what are shoaling fish?

 

[freddyk]

Schoaling fish are similar to schooling fish, in that they do best with numbers of their own kind. This can be especially important with barbs, as they can get aggressive, and higher numbers will help spread the aggression out. I do agree, a 10 gallon is a little small for rosy barbs. In small tanks like this, it's best to go with less 'spunky' fish, IMO.

 

[sylvia]

Schooling fish? You know... like fish that live in groups in the wild? Barbs, danios, minnows, tetras and rasboras are all common shoaling/schooling fish.

What sort of fish are you looking for and what's the algae eater?

edit: you beat me to it