The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
It is also fun to watch their predatory behavior, so I feed mine some live nightcrawlers from time to time. If yours is only 5 inches you can cut the crawlers and he will eat them. But other than that I feed mine hikari sinking carnivore pellets and some NLS sinking pellets. They are probably my favorite kind of fish! Can never have too many polypterus keepers!
How big are the tiger barbs? I prefer to feed slightly larger pellets because they can help keep aggressive feeders occupied so they can't simply gorge on all the food (tiger barbs). I would feed them the 2mm pellets and the bichirs could take 3mm, larger as it grows.
They are alive so there is always the potential of introducing something, but since they are not a fish that risk is much less than feeding feeder fish. I still wouldn't do it. There is nothing in worms that is needed and can't be provided by a more nutritionally complete and balanced high quality pellet.
Omega 1 shrimp pellets are awesome! I started feeding them to my bichir almost a month ago and he loves them and he grown about 3 inches since! His brownish color is a little darker now and his spots are more distinct. They're amazing
Guppies! I had one for a while and he kept my guppies under control. Grew him from about 2 inches up to about 8 and then sold him, needed some tank space. Be careful if you have anything with small holes in it, mine got stuck in my cholla wood a few times before I finally removed it.