Tinfoil Barbs

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
I love my tinfoils so hard. Started out with three basic redtail tinfoil barbs from PetsMart, and then got two leucistic redtail tinfoils, and then 'graduated' to a proper tinfoil barb from an Asian fish market here in Atlanta. (He's the one with the black markings in his fins, and the Vietnamese dude called him a 'scissortail'). They are real hogs, and mine are missing a few scales because they go wild for turkey hot dog day in the tank, and will ram themselves behind the flagstone to get to the pieces meant for the birchirs! It's easy to forget that they are omnivores, but mine haven't said no to algae wafers or cucumber slivers yet. The biggest one, Fusi, looking straight at the camera is about 9 inches long. I totally bought them to have an excuse to upgrade to a larger tank, ha ha.

And yes, yes, I know, I have THAT aquarium background. I think I might have lost some major cool points, ha ha! :nilly:

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My big tinfoils used to eat anything and everything. Infact, probably a more varied diet than I did. Flake, hikari staple pellets, hikari cichlid gold pellets, high protein sturgeon pellets, sinking catfish pellets, algae wafers, tetra doromin, whitebait, lancefish, frozen prawns, cockles, live river shrimps, frozen peas, plus prbably a few other bits I've forgotten about

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KNH what did you feed yours to get so big?, mine are in my 300 and only 7 inches and not good competitors for food and sort of spooky with the larger balas, one pacu, 3 bigger silver dollars that charge each other mostly, one oscar
 
They are timid fish. Mine get scared at just about anything.

One thing you can give them is duckweed. If you have other tanks you can grow some there and once it covers the top start harvesting handfuls every few days for them. Mine go into a feeding fenzy over it. They also love peas - frozen then thawed and with the skins peeled off. Mine grew from 2" to 6" in about 4 months and now they've gone from eating 1-2 peas each to eating almost 1/2 cup at a time between the 5 of them. It takes awhile to peel that many and I'd love someone here to tell me I don't need to any more.

They eat earthworms (even really big ones) so you could start a bin of red wigglers for them, or buy some fish bait worms sometimes (expensive). Mine also gobble down slugs I find. They like algae wafers and sinking pellets of any kind.

Mine are the greediest pig I've ever seen. If yours are being out-competed for food maybe feed more at once or from different parts of the tank or consider they may have internal parasites.

I read one thing online to treat parasites very non-toxicly - soak food in Epsom salt solution (1 tablespoon Epsom salt to 500 ml of water) for about 3 minutes before feeding and feed this way 3 times a day and in 3 days (3 -3 - 3) they should have passed any internal parasites they had. I did it on my fish and most of them had come carrying some parasites. You can tell because they'll pass long, stringy poops then have narrower bodies after that. Put the food in a dish and put a little of the Epsom solution in with it, one batch of the solution should be enough for the whole 3-day treatment.
 
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