Tiger Barb Question

[Lonewolfblue]

Train them--put an even meaner fish in with them. You should see my pictus boot my barbs out of his cave.

You should see what happens when my tiger barbs invade the territory set my by rainbow sharks, lol. The albino doesn't really care, but the regular rainbow shark, he don't like it, lol.

 

[hsherman1986]

well things seem to have calmed down in there since i added four to take the group up to six. They only do the head down behavior at this time of night (after midnight) before lights out.

they chase each other around still, but not aggressivly anymore.

 

[7Enigma]

7Enigma, I feel that people give these fish a bad wrap usually because they were kept in an inappropriate situation. You have a lot of fish in a 20 gal tall tank? That is probably why they are so aggressive. You would be surprised what kinds of fish will live together peacfully given enough room.

I don't feel that my tank is currently overstocked. Most of the fish are now in the medium size stage of life, and so I think this is a healthy stocking. The major issue that might have caused the original aggressiveness was the relatively bare tank, along with stocking the tigers in the tank FIRST. Due to cycling issues, I was recommended to stock one group of fish at a time (tigers first, then other barbs, cory's, Oto's). While this is a safe method, since it was fishless cycled I could have added all of them at the same time, or at least added the tiger's in last.

I've read some articles regarding decreasing aggressive behavior through the addition order in a tank. That is, put the most docile and least aggressive fish in FIRST, allow them to establish territories, and then add in more aggressive fish. But ultimately, I truly feel that the individual fish behavior (more than the species) is what causes some to be more aggressive than others. A couple of my tigers seem to be very easy-going in the tank, while one or two are always pestering the other barbs/cory.

 

[7Enigma]

or is there any way to "train" your fish?
i have a big time with aggressive fish, i would like to train them but how ?
like lock him into a seperated small tank (just like get in the jail) for few weeks ?lol

I had mentioned in my earlier post how I "trained" my one very aggressive tiger. I put him in a breeder cage for 10days. He could freely move around (though enclosed), and could still interact with the other fish so I didn't feel bad about doing it. He wasn't in isolation or anything, just couldn't physically attack other fish. I also fed the other fish more food than the one in the breeder cage hoping to allow the other fish to if not grow bigger, at least get stronger/more healthy.

While I'm hesitant to say this will work in all cases, in my case, it had a very positive benefit. Again please don't think I hate tiger barbs, quite the contrary. They are one of the most beautiful and interesting species I've seen, with great interaction with each other and schooling behavior when scared, but along with that comes a general aggression between each other and other tankmates.