What's new

Upping schools a problem

Pet of the Month Starts Now!
FishForums.net Pet of the Month
๐Ÿถ Click here to enter! ๐Ÿฐ

AquaBarb

Aqua}^>holic
๐Ÿ† Tank of the Year ๐Ÿ†
3x Fish of the Month ๐ŸŒŸ
4x Tank of the Month ๐Ÿ†
Joined
Apr 21, 2019
Messages
2,257
Reaction score
2,117
Location
Staffordshire England
Hi TFF,

Can upping groups of fish that are already established with their pecking orders etc become a problem?

I want to up my cherry barbs and zebra danios in my 29 gallon but dont want to upset the harmony in the tank. My current groups have been in 7 or 8 months
 
Last edited:
With some species this could be problematical, but generally not for the peaceful shoaling species among the tetras, rasboras, danios and barbs, with a very few exceptions. I would not worry about this here, with the cherry barbs and zebra danios. However, it is always advisable to add as many as you can at the same time. Not only does this tend to avoid any one fish being picked on, as can happen with many species, but the new fish being in a group themselves will settle in much more rapidly and this lessens the possibility of problems.

Species where this hardly ever works are the shoaling cichlids (angelfish for example), some of the gourami, and botine loaches. These fish usually develop very strong hierarchies quite quickly after the group is introduced to a new environment and adding new fish even a couple of weeks later can be disastrous.
 
Cheers Byron,

With the cherry's im thinking of adding 3 more to take my group to 4 male and 5 female.

With the zebra's ill be adding 4 to take them to a group of 9. At the moment i have 4 female and 1 male. Does ratio m/f matter that much with danios do you know?
 
Cheers Byron,

With the cherry's im thinking of adding 3 more to take my group to 4 male and 5 female.

With the zebra's ill be adding 4 to take them to a group of 9. At the moment i have 4 female and 1 male. Does ratio m/f matter that much with danios do you know?

All sounds OK to me. As for m/f it is usually better to have a relatively even ratio, though there are species where this is not the case because males can drive females hard and having more of the latter spreads this out, but I wouldn't worry here. I'm sure I wouldn't be able to distinguish male/female in the store tank of presumably fairly immature fish, but as you have more females now even all males at 4 shouldn't be an issue.
 

Most reactions

trending

Staff online

Members online

Back
Top