ok so i know they aren't cichlids but they are going in with my cichlids so figured i would post here. but yeah so i got some tiger barbs from petco since i was wanting to get a schooling fish that would have a chance of surviving in my tank and petco was having a 5 for $5 sale and figured i would grab a couple of the green ones as well to mix up the school a little bit even though they were more expensive. well i have them growing out in small 20g long with 2 jag babies (1.5in long). 2 days after buying them i find that one of the green barbs has died and been eaten, and he was the largest and was acting completely normal and eating for those two days. now about a week and a half later the other green one i bought died as well. now this was after moving the tank to a friends house where i am staying for several weeks and they all were pretty stressed out but he didnt die until several days after this move and had been acting totally normal in those several days. i just thought it was weird that two seemingly healthy fish would just suddenly die and that both of them would be the only 2 green tiger barbs that i bought. are they just weaker or is there some kind of racist thing going on with the other barbs? my tank has been set-up for like a year and i do at least weekly water changes, sometimes more (since its a grow out tank i keep the water pristine to have the fish grow as fast as possible)
Green Tiger barbs weak?
- Thread starter Sarah88
- Start date
Barbs hate eachother and will eat eachother. Ive had 2 unsucessful schools of tiger and 1 that was pretty cool of the greens. The second biggest one seems like to nip the biggest one. They really nip anything they can catch. Id suggest have no less than 10or12 of these guys to disperse the nipping and get them pretty small so they can grow up together. Probably want more females than males. Great dithers for semi aggressive cichlids if you can get them to school proper.
yeah i had 7 to begin with, 5 normals and 2 greens, ive had regular tiger barbs in the past and other than issues with nipping when not kept in a large enough school i never had any issues, definitely never had any kill each other even when i had only 3 in the past, and all of these barbs are tiny (which is why they are in the grow out tank because they are all less than an inch and would get eaten by my sens in a heartbeat in my larger tank) and the first green barb to die was the largest out of the entire school which is why its confusing me so much
They fight for dominance alot. The options are to get more barbs to distribute the aggression or, what i did, Just get a different schooling fish. Barbs are super fiesty little things, Ive never had 1 die of natural causes, they usually end up half eaten too.
*You need more than 7. Double that and they should calm down.
*You need more than 7. Double that and they should calm down.
thanks, yeah ill def do that then, the 5 or 5 deal is still going on so ill grab some more while they are still cheap, i just thought it was weird that it was just the green ones that died cus id like to get more of them but not if they are going to die again because the regular tigers are a buck while the green ones are like 2.50
ok so my fish are officially rascist. i went out and bought 5 more green ones and 2 striped for a total of 12 tiger barbs, added them this evening and came back 2 hours later to find one of the new green ones lying dead at the top of the water with its face eaten off. soo i separated the more aggressive jag baby from the school to rule him out as a suspect (i highly doubt he is) and if there is another dead green one in the morning then im returning all of them and just getting all regular ones. during the couple of days where i had only the striped ones in the tank i had no casualties at all...
Even if the tiger barbs got along with each other, they will eventually get gobbled up by the jags, so you need to be prepared for that. Tigers are basically defenseless when asleep. They get into that "head down" posture, zone out, and become easy snacks.
they aren't permanent tankmates, they are only in my 20g grow out tank. the jags im not even planning on keeping i only got them to heal them up and grow them out a bit since they were on their last leg being beaten to death at petco because the people didnt know what they were and had them mixed in with the african cichlids and i wont have any room for them in my large tank once my current stock is grown and the tiger barbs are too small to put in there right now because my senegals will eat them (not worried about my other cichlids, ive put much smaller fish with them and not had issues, only had problems with the senegals killing off things at night) but yeah im like 99% sure its from aggression within the school but luckily there were no more deaths today so ill just have to keep a close eye out on them
Nice Sarah, I see you liked my idea. I have been doing a school of 8 of each and I have also lost one here and there. I have noticed that the pure Tigers seems to be more stable. I just replaced a albino and a green tiger today. Since I have had to do this at Petco quite a few times they have gotten alittle suspecious of how well I take care of my fish. Water parameters have been great every time and they now now wear/tear on the fish so I know it wasen't a beating or attempted eating. Had to show them a video of my tank to prove it. Not to mention the manager was stunned I was giving advice to people in the store and had them even following me out the door asking me questions. Just goes to show ya. Many may have missed this as I posted it in the Video Forum, but this shows ya it can be done sarah. Just got to be patient and do a good sized school. Here is mine eating Midas eggs from my F1 Pair.
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yeah i loved how it looked and thought i would try it out, if it weren't for my sens i could have put them straight into the big tank but they way they are they have had several very expensive dinners once the lights went out
but yeah so im just trying to grow out a nice school and once they are about 2in i can put them into the big tank and hopefully everything will work out then. but yeah thats good to know you have had similar experiences with them being weaker, this is my first time keeping any other variant of them and didnt remember having any kinds of problems like this with the regular barbs in the past even when i only had a few of them together
but yeah so im just trying to grow out a nice school and once they are about 2in i can put them into the big tank and hopefully everything will work out then. but yeah thats good to know you have had similar experiences with them being weaker, this is my first time keeping any other variant of them and didnt remember having any kinds of problems like this with the regular barbs in the past even when i only had a few of them together