This will need some backstory! I have a 10 gallon tank, and I used to have three cherry barbs, 4 tetras, and two glow light tetras. They had all lived peacefully for almost 6 months. I lost one glow light tetra months ago- no tank issues. BUT recently I lost 1 cherry barb to a weird disease and then two weeks later lost another cherry barb to the same thing. The tank has been treated and everyone is healthy. Since losing the two cherry barbs, my one leftover cherry, Barb has incessantly been picking on my tetras and cornering them and now they are hiding or when they come out they get chased back in! I was thinking he (pretty sure it’s a he) was picking on everyone because he was alone so I went to the store and they didn’t have cherry barbs, but they had golden Barb’s and I was told that they would help and they would school together like the other cherry barbs did. So far it has not helped and he is still picking on my tetras!! He never did this before loosing his two other buddies! I don’t want to ~get rid of~ (to put nicely) but it is stressin my other fish out!! Suggestions!?
Cherry Barb Bully- HELP!
- Thread starter Eliza22
- Start date
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Andy Sager
Aquarium Advice Addict
Getting more cherry Barbs. Since he's not schooling with the gold barbs, I'd try to return them as I believe you were given bad information. Cherry barbs ime, do not school with just any other barb, especially ones that grow much larger than they do.
As for the gender of your Cherry Barb, males will be red and if yours is red, you need to get some females for him, not more males as that will cause fighting in the school. Female cherry barbs will look like this: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/pregnant-cherry-barb-puntius-titteya-260nw-786131668.jpg ( Female in front, male in back. Disregard the URL that it's of a pregnant female as these fish are egg layers so they can not get pregnant. ) Until you can get more cherries, you can isolate the one in another tank or a Guppy net breeder like this: https://www.petsmart.com/fish/maint...ts/top-fin-aquarium-mesh-breeder-5149544.html ( You can get them in a variety of stores from Walmart to pet stores to Box stores. I just used this link for the picture and the URL was short.
)I did think it was weird advice to add the goldens because my other tetras never intermingled but I am a fish newbie and the guy seemed quite confident so I only asked a few questions.. should have trusted my gut �� I will try again in a few days to see if they have more cherry barbs instead! I’m not sure if they will take these fish back and my tank is too small for three or two more so we’ll see what happens. Thanks!!!
Andy Sager
Aquarium Advice Addict
Actually, the reason you only have the one male now may be BECAUSE you had two other males with him. He is the dominant one so he killed off any competitors.
Maybe not outright but harassed them enough to stress them enough to die off. Generally, in a school of Barbs, any kind of Barbs, there is a ratio of 3-4 females for every male in the school. This allows the males to breed with more than one female and the smaller amount of males keeps the fighting to a minimum. When you get more, get females only for a more harmonious aquarium. 
