Fin Nipping....

[thecoolguy]

hey guys....sorry for all the threads....

my common pleco's fins are getting slowly messed up (used to be 100% beautiful and perfect) .....

the culprits - i think are the tiger barbs and the yellow labs....

they are about 1/10th the size of the common, will they learn or eventually stop nipping?

he has an attitude and knows how to control the tank.....but they seem to confuse his flowing fins with food at times.....

will they get over it?

 

[Atreyu]

Tiger barbs should be kept in schools of atleast 6 to not show aggression to other fish. They usually pick on fish with long flowing fins. You may have to move the plec. or create more hiding spots

 

[ShadowVengance]

they are very agressive territorial fish. they will never learn/ stop nipping.

what you COULD do, however, is move around all of the ornaments in the tank more frequently. this way the cichlids won't be able to setup territory for them to protect and will be less agressive. I'm not sure how well this would work on barbs, try getting more of them as someone else suggested, a school is about 3-5 fish minimum, keeping that many barbs = less/no agression.

Also, you could ad some more hiding spots for your pleco, they are nocturnal and should hide most of the time well out of the way of the cichlids, unless it has recently decided to use a cave belonging to one of the cichlids, that is bound to get it's fins shredded.


hope that helps