Stocking a 30 gallon

[CFC]

My 7 are doing well (touches wood) and are now approaching 2.5-3" in length and are quite fat, with these it definately seems that the more you have the better.

I would imagine that tigerbarbs would work quite well with exodons, i have a couple of purple spot gudgeons, a couple of dwarf girraffe cats and a couple of small leporinus with mine and there hasn't been any major problems, just the odd nipped fin here and there (mainly by the leporinus). As long as the fish they are kept with can be equally aggressive and nippy back it seems the exodons will back off.

 

[sylvia]

To answer your paradisefish question... Spiketails are very peaceful and likely to get nipped but you can keep tiger barbs with pretty much anything provided the group is large enough. IMO, as long as there are plenty of places for the spiketails to retreat to, they'd work with the barbs. Heavily planting would help of course but you say you don't want to plant so you'd just have to add some intricate rockwork or something. Still, I haven't tried it myself so watch closely in case of trouble and take them out if you see any major nipping. If the worst comes to the worst, spiketails will live quite happily in something as small as a 10 gallon so finding them a new home wouldn't be all that difficult.