Tiger barbs.. Gulp! Advice and comments appreciated

[BAINBRIDGE]

Update:

The tank is still peaceful and the Corys are happy. Those Hikari wafers are great because they get knocked around into crevices and the Corys can wedge themselves over the wafer. No visibly damaged fins so far. Occasionally a curious tiger might nose-butt a Cory snaffling around the mid to upper layer, but the tigers are generally leaving the Corys alone in the bottom and the Corys don't appear to be hiding from the tigers.

By thunder those tigers can eat!

[BAINBRIDGE]

Update:

Things are going well. The tigers are now getting quite chunky and, although they occasionally have hierarchy battles, there's no damaged fins on the Corys.

The Cory's go about their business as usual, but do admittedly have to move now and again if a bored tiger moves in for an exploratory peck. There are plenty of hidey holes and silk plants for cover.

When the food goes in, however, the Corys are out in force and snaffling away!

I've got few good techniques to ensure everyone is well fed, so all in all I'm really happy with the tank.

The final thing I'm looking at doing to this set up is to introduce some surface dwellers and I was thinking... A small group of golden wonder panchax!

Any comments on this possible choice will be welcome.

[plankton]

Golden wonders are a risk with small fish, even though they only get to around 4" themselves and will attempt to eat anything you add to the tank in the future.
They should be ok with your current stock though.

[BAINBRIDGE]

Tigerbarb update:

All good in the hood. The only notable thing is that during the summer I was keeping the light off to reduce the tank temperature, and now the weather has cooled, and the light is back on, the tigers were initially very reclusive and hiding in among the plants!

Over the past couple of weeks they've become more and confident in venturing out into the light, and they're starting to roam about like a shoal if ravenous piranha again

[towerp]

Hi there,

I have a large group of tiger barbs however they keep dying one by one due to fin nipping amongst the group. It seems there’s always one Tiger barb which gets picked on it’s tail and/or pelvic fins are nibbled away until no - more. I’ve got 11 Tiger barbs now remaining with 2 with nibbled fins, one very bad which I don’t think willl survive much longer.

What do I do? Buying more doesn’t seem like a solution, I had 14 initially , they are kept along with 8 Odessa barbs - the 2 males are very aggressive but don’t seem to nip the Tigers fins too much - the damage seems to be done by the Tigers themselves.

Could I drop the temperature slightly ? It’s at 24C currently

Other fish are Rainbow shark and 3 striped loaches who appear fine. The fish are housed in a Juwel 240 litre aquarium.

Any suggestions ?
Thanks

[BAINBRIDGE]

Hi @towerp apologies for the late reply, I didn't see your post.

Are you sure it's other tigers causing the damage and not the shark?

I think I've just got lucky with my lot, but there is one smaller tiger that presumably is at the bottom of the pecking order. He mainly stays away from the main shoal and seems to put another object between himself and line of sight of the group, but thankfully has no damage. Is there enough plants etc for the injured tigers to hide and stay out of trouble?

[black ghost]

I didn’t see it either @towerp, apologies.

First thing I would do is remove the shark and the Odessas. In other words I wouldn’t try to keep tigers with any other barb species, or a shark which is a territorial fish wanting the tigers’ swimming space as it’s territory.

If you replaced those fish with another 8-10 tigers and they had the whole tank above the loaches to themselves I’m pretty sure they would become peaceful. When they’re “happy” (enough numbers, enough space, and able to go wherever they want) they are not aggressive towards each other. Their aggression is ‘harmless pecking order stuff’ that has got out of hand because they’re not “happy”.

To be honest I wouldn’t be comfortable with tigers and loaches together either. Are you sure the loaches aren’t the culprits, overnight?

[Pleco Fan]

Any chance of a pic?

[Martinspuddle]

Any chance of a pic?

Yeah! Where's the pictures!??

[BAINBRIDGE]

Well, after 12mths plus of relative peace, it's all kicking off with the Tiger Barbs..

I don't know which of these events are possibly connected, but I'll list what happened and hopefully someone can make sense of it:

I started with 13 Tiger Barbs, all bought at the same time, and once out of quarantine they settled into my main tank well.

One fish died after about 6 months, seemingly suddenly with no visible signs of damage, leaving 12 fish.

About 2 months ago one of the smaller males began lurking behind some plants away from the main group, he seemed to be avoiding the other fish but I couldn't see any visible damage. About a month ago I found him dead in the tank, leaving 11 fish.

A few days ago ago I noticed 2-3 females looked quite bloated, with one of them looking really bloated:





Could they be full of eggs? They're still like this now.

For the past few days the males have kicked off. At first I thought it was the biggest male throwing his weight around, which happened from time to time, but it's not just him, all of the males seem to be chasing each other and locking jaws.

Does anyone have any ideas what is going on?

Are there broody females causing the males to fight for dominance to get first dibbs on fertilising the eggs?

Has the reduction in numbers changed the dynamics of the group? If so, will adding a few more remedy this?

Any comments welcome.