Next Steps

[soccermatt]

Hi,

I have 5 small (around .75 - 1 inch) tiger barbs that are wild caught from Sumatra in my 15 gallon aquarium. They are always doing great and stay very tightly schooled with is very cool to watch.

I would like to introduce some new fish relatively soon (withing 3-4 weeks or sooner if possible). My reason for this is right now these fish are still to small to nip, and from what i have read if they grow up with one another they should all be happy with another later on.

I was thinking i might like to add Platy's. I really liked the look of the Red Wag Platy, or Tuxedo Platy. I would like fry, and i heard female:male must be 1:2. So i was thinking maybe 3 Platy's.

An alternative to this i like would be a dwarf gourami. At my LFS (which is excellent) had them housed with these tiger barbs so i thought they should do well together.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[mattlee]

tiger barbs are renowned fin nippers and if kept in large enough groups other fish may get away from the nipping, 5 is not enough barbs to do this. what happens is if you have more barbs they will squabble amongst themselves most of the time as they are competing to be the dominant fish in the tank. if you only have a few then single fish may be too weak/small/scared and break away from the group making it even smaller and its then when the problems happen as dominance is too easily sorted and they look else where....
also fish with long colourfull fins are going to be the target. fish like gouramis, bettas, guppys etc etc. did your lfs have the gouramis in the tank with lots of barbs?

 

[Curiosity101]

I personally don't think that tank is big enough for tiger barbs long term.

They grow up to 8cm (3.1") and really do need at least a 2ft tank that has a volume over 20gal.

I agree with what mattlee has said, 5 tigers probably wont be enough to keep agression levels down (especially in a smaller than ideal tank).

 

[waterdrop]

Agree with the above. Even if these particular barbs were to only get to about 2.5"(6cm) they would be at the least taking up 12 of the 15 available inches of stocking, leaving very little for that final bit of space. And having had tigers a few times when I was younger I can confirm that there's probably little way to avoid their direct aggression. WD

 

[soccermatt]

Thank you for all the replies.

How long will it take until these little guys are fully grown. I am asking this because hopefully this summer i would get another tank(30gallons+).

So before they are full grown would it be possible to put in anything else or not. To mattlee, there where probably 10+ tigers in the tank but also 4+ DG and in a tank <20 Gallons.

 

[Curiosity101]

I certainly wouldn't put anything else in there until you can upgrade (unless it's more tiger barbs).
The filter and tank should be fine with the additional barbs. And they will be happier in the group aswell as being more visually pleasing.

Also you need to understand that with many fish, the juveniles of the species are peacful (regardless of the temprement of the adults).
So LFS can sometimes house 'incompatible' fish together without issues.
Obviously this doesn't apply to all fish in all circustances, but it's often the reason you see fish mixed together which normally (at home) would be a bad idea.

 

[soccermatt]

Thank you for your input.

I think i will just leave the tank how it is, and see how things go. I will see how quickly i can get a bigger tank, but i doubt that i will have any time before the summer.