Pregnant Tiger Barb

[missdawne]

One of my female tiger barbs has swollen up like you would not believe. She is down right fat. I moved her and her male friend into a serperate tank. Will she lay her eggs in there? Does he need to be with her? How long will she stay Pregnant? I have had my tank for 3 years. She is about a year or so old, hes a bit older. I have seen the females get fat before, just not this fat. I looked at some pics of pregnant tiger barbs on the web, and thats exactly what she looks like.

This is my first breeding experience with barbs. I breed guppies before. Somehow I do not think it is quite the same.

 

[Yenko]

Barbs are much harder to breed than livebearers. Tiger barbs like to spawn on leafy plants like saggitarius, java moss. Mine also seem to like Java Fern roots. If you want to try to cause spawning (They will spawn in a community tank) do a 10-15% water change and raise the temperature by 2-4 degrees FARENHEIT. Is your water very hard or basic? That could reduce their urge to spawn.

Are you sure you aren't overfeeding? Tiger barbs overeat alot. If they frequently go into a nose-down position after eating then they are probably overfed. If you feed your tiger barbs a good amount, they will swim around looking for more food afterwards.

 

[missdawne]

At this point I am not even sure that the fat fish is a female! In the other tank I put them in, my fat fish and the male started circling each other and acting very odd. They looked to be nipping a bit and turned very different colors. This was right after I turned the light on in the morning. I put them back in the big tank. It does do a lot of the "nose down" floating. The lady at the pet store said maybe a bladder problem. All I know is that it is very very fat! Will it die from this?

I have a 29 gal. tank.
8 Tiger Barbs
2 Long Finned Rosy Barbs
2 Glass Fish
1 Huge Algea Eater

 

[Yenko]

Male tiger barbs have a red nose, females have one thats the same color of the rest of them. My 2 adults do that fin nipping thing in the morning too. I think thats a normal courtship behavior.

I think you should reduce the amount you feed your fish and see if the nose-down position goes away. If not, it could be a sign of excess nitrAte in your water. If only one fish does it it doesn't mean anything.

Are your tiger barbs all adults or are there only two adults? If you have only one adult male and one adult female, the female will be abused by the male. I'm in that situation at the moment, and whenever my 2 adults spawn the female hides and gets a bit of a nose-down position in the water. Adequate hiding room like plants and caves seems to make my Tiger Barbs happy.

On the other hand it could be a disease. If you have a hospital tank I'd put it in there and see if it helps.

 

[missdawne]

As far as coloration goes, I have 1 adult male, 2 adult females, the other 5 t-barbs are juveniles. The fat one is a female in coloration, I only doubted it because of the weird dance they did. Looked a bit like fighting with a lot of rubbing and circling. She is the only one who does the nose down thing, and she does not do it all the time. She is moving around real well and feeding, she is just really really fat. Not to the point where her scales are popping or anything. I am beggining to think maybe she is egg bound. They have been chasing each other all over and brushing through the plants. The rest of my fish are fine. Crazy as usual.

 

[Yenko]

That's spawning behavior you described. My female starts to look pretty overweight when she gets swollen with eggs then they spawn and things get back to normal. Things should be fine in a day or two.