My boyfriend just went and got some tiger barbs. Can anyone tell me about them?

I've never owned them persoanally, but they are very aggressive fin nippers and need to be kept in large groups of at least 7 with lots of territory. Compatable tankmates are a little limited so be careful with fish you put in the same tank.

They are in with a 3" Dragonfish.....
I want to know if I can get a puffer and put it in there. I posted in the compatiability section.

Any advice?

tiger barbs would be a bit much for your puffer to handle so i would say no to puffer, most puffers really need the tank based around them and cant really be bought as a after thought, that said they are my favorate fish for there personanlities and intelligence !!

have you noticed any aggression between the barbs and the dragonfish? i would imagine there might be.

what size tank are they all in?

No, the tiger barbs are babies and my dragon fish is about 3.5" long. They are in a 10 gal. The tiger barbs run from him!!!

I had balas before.............. never had any luck with them though!!

Angel, you are going to need a much bigger tank for each. The tiger barbs will grow to be 2.5" and become very aggressive toward the goby. The goby will grow very large and need a brackish tank. They do best as a species only tank because they have very bad eye sight. Most other fish will gobble up all the food before he gets a chance.

yea, i caught that in one of ur posts in the gf section. balas aren't easy fish to care for. they're like what paddas pal said about puffers, really better to suit the tank around them.

also on puffers, i heard they were really messy fish and usually do better kept species only (i was thinking of getting some till i heard that from someone on here ).

also, you may want to watch the barbs as they get a little more brave, they may pick on ur dragonfish and/or steal any food he may be looking for. here's a good link on what to expect from your little 3" fish .

http://www.whozoo.org/Anlife2001/johangus/jg_dragonfish.htm

The place where I got him said that he could live in fresh water......

I just don't know what to do with him now! And my 6 yr old is very attached!

Justin- How big are your balla's?

Hi everyone..........my friend just gave me a 40-50 gal tank she just had sitting in her garage! It is very dirty and I will probably need to replace the hole filter system because it is very old and curoded but I am very excited! What should I use to clean it? I am propably not going to get it up and running until after I move but my fish will be so happy!!! I is an octogon shape and tall not wide. It even has a nice wood stand. Would it be safe to add 3 or 4 more tiger barbs now? Someone said that they do better in groups of 7.

Talk to you all later! ~Audra~

The point of keeping a shoal of tiger barbs is so that if you have a large enough tank and if you keep them with other fish then they will be so busy fighting with each other for dominance they won't care about the other fish. I have 8 in a tank by themselves: three tiger, three albino, and two green. Mine are just babies too and so cute! They are very fast swimmers and are real food hogs. I think that like goldies they would eat until they exploded!

Awesome find on the tank!! How surprisingly convenient, huh?

Fill it with 1 part 5% bleach and 10 parts water. Let it run for a few hours with a filter (doesn't matter if you need to get a new one or not, we just need to make sure the bleach is circulated evenly) and soak any other 2nd hand used equipment in the tank. Drain it and fill with clean water a few times and then let sit overnight. Drain and fill one more time and add 10 times the amount of water conditioner you would normally add and let that run for 12 hours or so. Drain and store until you are ready to set it up. A 40-50 gallon will happily hold the dragonfish and a few other compatible brackish fish, or a school of 7+ tiger barbs and some more semi-aggressive freshwater fish.

Cool........ I am so excited!!!

I have a tropical tank that I call my geriatric tank. The fish are old but healthy.

There are 7 tiger barbs, 3 neons, 1 clown loach, 1 tretra(?), and two common plecos. They are some of mine and some recues that I took in. No one bothers anyone(maybe because of age) but all seem happy and look great. One tiger barb is missing an eye but I got him that way.

vmlola- how big is your tank??

I have a question....

My tiger barbs do not touch the blood worms that I feed my dragon fish. Is it because they are babies?

lol, i think they aren't touching the bloodworms cuz ur lucky be thankful ur goby has a food supply ur barbs aren't messing w/ right now.

balas are kinda hard to measure. some day i'll figure out a good way other than just guestimating (which turns out i don't think i'm very good at ) i tried to compare them to the diameter of the clay pots as they swam over them today, so i'm guessing just about 5" now. i think the power with which they swim led me to believe they were larger before.

congrats on ur new tank.

Guys the ammonia in my tank is .5-1.0

What do I do???

Do a large water change right away. Test again and if its still high do another, and another tomorrow. What are the readings for nitrite and nitrate?

Does your water conditioner detoxify ammonia?

It sounds like the addition of the barbs bumped up the ammonia and your bio system couldn't handle that much more ammonia so sudden. Was your tank fully cycled (ammonia-0 nitrite-0 nitrate-higher than in the tap) before you got them?

I just totally cleaned the tank and changed all water because the fish I had before were sick!

After that all levels were a 0!!!

You didn't clean the filter right? Cleaning the filter can cause harm to your bio bugs. Test again tomorrow night for ammonia, nitrite and nitrate and post here so we can help you with your cycle.

Yes I did!

Did about a 40% water change.

Ammonia is .25-.5
nitrate- 0-20
nitrite- 0-.5
hardness- 300 ???
alkalinity- 120
pH- 8.4 ???

those levels with the ??? are very differant than usual, I will retest in a while...........

Should I do another water change tonight??

it's better

amm= .25-.5
nitrate= 0-20
nitrite= 0-.5
hardness= 75
alkalinity= 80-120
pH= 7.8

Since you scrubbed everything down you will have to re-cycle the tank. As long as you test daily and keep up the water changes to keep the toxic levels down it shouldn't hurt the barbs. Mine seem to be very hardy little buggers and a friend of mine said his were like that, too. Good luck with them, they sure are cute!!

whoa thats quite a difference in the results! What test kit do you use?

In the future, never clean out the filter. If the filter pad gets totally disgusting you can swish it around in a bucket of dirty tank water (from that tank) until it gets clean. Changing or washing the filter with tap water kills your bugs and you will need to cycle your tank again.

Ammonia and nitrite can be deadly to fish, so test the water daily and do water changes according to the results (most likely large daily water changes). Here's a link if you haven't seen it already: http://www.kokosgoldfish.com/cycle.html The link is talking about goldfish, but its really the same for tropicals too. You have a lot of work ahead of you to re-gain the cycle. I don't think all your bugs were totally wiped out because you still have nitrite. That's a very good thing because that cuts a lot of time out. If you don't already have a waterconditioner that detoxifies ammonia and nitrite, I recomend you get a bottle of prime. Dosing this in the tank will help keep toxicity down when params are high but you don't have time for a water change. This does not replace water changes, but buys you some extra time and energy. Example: You are getting ready to go to work in the morning and you test the water, and ammonia is at .3, but you don't have time for a water change because you have to go to work and you won't be home til late when the ammonia is even higher. Dose the prime in the morning and do the big water change at night.

Goodluck!! If you have any questions don't be afraid to ask

Thanks Kissy, for all the help! I just did a 40-50% water change and will post the results in a bit!

The test strips I use are Mardel Ammonia Test Strips & Jungle 5 tests in one dip - Multi Test Kit.

The water conditioners I use are Tetra EasyBalance and Tetra Aqua AquaSafe!

Does it matter what color the rocks are???

Do you mean the gravel in the tank? Or are you reffering to something else?

I started off with those mardel strips and they were pretty innacurate in my experience, and spendy too. They would always keep changing color after I dipped, or they were splotchy, etc. When you have a little extra money, I reccomend you buy the Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Freshwater Masterkit. Its about $30 instore, but if you print off the product on petsmart's website and bring it to that store and you'll save $10-15. You can use that trick with anything at petsmart. I've found equipment for tanks to have the biggest price difference. This test kit is much more precise and you get over 700 tests.

OK thanks for the advise.

Yes, I was talking about the gravel!!! Does color matter? Do certain fish like certain colors???

Where are you from? If you don't mind my asking....

Nope color of gravel doesn't really matter. Some fish like subdued lighting and for them black gravel doesn't make it seem so bright for them and they will be happier that way. I'm from AZ.

Cool. I am in CA!

Now my nitrites are going up!!!

Big probs guys.......... they are dying. I just quarenteened one!

It died !!! I did a water change and about to do another..............

I posted in the Tropical Disease sec......

Can you guys please help me there..........

It's titled Please Help....