We all enjoy having a tank filled with color and that apparently is the of many aquarists.
Whether by mixing different kinds or simply getting ourselves a few more individuals of the same kind, building a fish community is definitely a fun task.
When trying to find the perfect combination of fish in a tank or aquarium, we often find ourselves making mistakes.
That’s due to the lack of compatibility between certain kinds. Some fish go with whatever other kind, but that doesn’t always happen.
Tiger Barbs, for example, are fish with which you’ll only make that mistake once.
Tiger Barb Community Tanks
Upon mixing Tiger Barbs with some other kinds, the negative result was quickly observed.
Especially with fish that have long and flowing fins, like the guppies and angelfish, which is particularly teasing for Tiger Barbs, the mix simply didn’t work.
There are kinds of fish that go well with Tiger Barbs, but trial and error have proven us wrong a few times.
I setup a community tank various kind of fishes as shown in the video below:
From my case, the tiger barbs are sharing the tank with the following fishes, and here are the complete list of the fishes in the tank above:
I will add my comment on how are each type of fish doing, one by one based on my personal experience in the past few months.
- Black strip tiger barb – Doing well, seems to be happy and swim actively
- Denison barb -When I first moved 3 of my big denison barbs from my another tank to this tank, 2 fishes dead in minutes due to shocking. The remaining one was shocked too and managed to live in this tank. After few days, that denison barb is dead too. After that, I visited the fish shop and add other 6 denison barbs to this tank. So far all of them are doing great!
- Golden barb – My favourite type of barb, very beautiful gold color. However, I do think that golden barb is not suitable in this community tank. I bought around 10 of them and add to this tank. Until now, most of them are dead, only the last one survived.
- Green Barb – Just like black strip tiger barb, doing well and swim around.
- Albino Barb – I think few of them who are weaker dead in a few weeks time. After that, the remaining albino barbs seems to be doing great in this tank.
- Gold Puntius denisonii – Great fish, seems like a sibling to the denison barb. This fish is doing great too!
- GloFish – Easy to keep fish, I bought few type of Glofish including normal GloFish, Long Fin GloFish and some tiger strip Glofish. All of them are doing great in the tank and survived. I think Glofish is a good tank mate for tiger barbs.
- Clown Loach – This fish normally swim around looking for food. I have two of them and have keep them for more than 1.5 years. A very strong fish. One of them was infected with the white spot disease, and it recovered on its own! That’s amazing. They are very fast in swim and sometimes hiding under the wood or at the corner. However, be careful if you want to catch it with bare hand, I got bitten a few times when trying to catch it with bare hand.
- Rummy Nose Tetra – This is a common type of tetra. They need to be kept in a group of 6 or more. Although they are smaller in size, but they are doing well in this tank.
- Silver Bala Shark – Although it has name by “Shark” and has a bigger size compared to other fishes, but silver shark did not do well. Few of them are dead. I am not sure what is the exact reason, probably attacked by other fishes. I do think that the silver shark is not compatible with other fishes.
- Algae Eater – Pleco – I believe many keep this fish for them to clean the tank. And, they are actually doing a very great cleaning job! Before this fish was added, my tank grows algae at a very fast rate. The algae will cover the bottom of the tank and the wood in around one to two weeks time. I was so frustrated to clean the tank every two weeks. Since I added this fish to the tank, they clean the tank automatically everyday. And there are no more algae at the bottom of tank. I have two of them which are in yellow color, looks better than the common ugly black pleco!
- Platinum Parrot fish – They are actually very attractive and can be spotted easily due to their white color. I have many of them and ALL of them survived till today. That’s great! One thing you should know about this fish is it will sometimes eat the plant. Overall they are easy to keep fish with high survival rate in a community tank.
- Blue Tiger Parrot Fish – Just like the platinum parrot fish above, this fish is easy to keep too. I do think they are close relative of the platinum parrot fish above. I bought 6 of them if not mistaken , and most of them survived till today. One dead due to being attacked and its eye is eaten. The fish that losing one eye dead the next day due to the injury.
- Odessa barb – It is one type of barb fish but I would say this fish did not really compatible with other fishes in this community tank. Half of them are dead and the remaining are not really well too. I can see that sometimes other fishes will attack the odessa barb and they are quite stressed. I am planning to move the remaining odessa barbs to a new tank.
- Dawkinsia filamentosa – I did not know the exact name of this fish when I bought them at the fish store. This fish is growing fast, bigger in size and has a black spot on its tail. An easy to keep fish and all of them survived and doing well in the community tank.
- Danio – I normally will see the danios are swimming at the top of my tank. They seldom will move to middle or the bottom part of the tank. I bought many of them from the fish store, including the green danio, yellow danio and red danio. They are smaller in size compared with other fishes, and I do think that the color might affect their survival rate in this community tank. Most of the Green color danios survived. However, yellow and red danios are mostly dead or went missing. I did found one red danio being trapped at my sump filter and I moved it to the main tank. After a few days, that red danio went missing again and I never see it again!
- Electric blue balloon ram – I find this fish funny and cute at the same time! They did well in the tank and have high survival rate. They are normally looking “Angry” but I never see them attacking other fishes. A calm and cool fish with “angry” face.
- Blue botia – The most shy fish I ever have. You can hardly see them if there are substrate, wood or other hiding places in your tank. They will hide 24 hours a day. Even when I dropped the food the in the tank, it will not swim up to rush for food. I would recommend you to use sinking fish food for this fish. They did look a bit similar with the clown loach, but they have a totally different temperament. One word: “SHY”.
What Happen When There Are More Male Tiger Barbs in the same Tank
Things got easier when we chose to mix them with other Tiger Barbs.
Still, there was a bit of a problem when we tried putting more than one male in the same school.
They are natural alpha males, which means they will fight over the domination of the school.
On the other hand, whenever we put male Tiger Barbs with females, the result was just as expected.
They lived happily and enjoyed each other’s companionship most of the time. What we could easily notice was a clear change in behavior during mating season.
When that time came, the male instantly began nudging at the female and even nipping on the fins.
Once the female laid the eggs for the male to fertilize them everything went back to normal.
However, Tiger Barbs eat their eggs and fry, so we had to take special care of their feeding time.
It also became clear to us the importance of having plenty of long-leaved live plants, which served as a safe haven for the eggs and even the fry.
The whole thing turned otherwise when we decided to add a few more Tiger Barbs to the tank where only the couple lived.
That was where we learned that it is extremely important to separate the mating couple from the rest of the school before the female lays the eggs.
That is because, as mentioned before, Tiger Barbs eat their eggs and fry, so having more than two in the same tank made it unsafe for the newborn.
In the end, we realized the best move is to set the mating couple in a different tank until the male fertilizes the eggs.
Once that happens, they can be returned to the previous tank.
However, we also noticed that the female needed more fleshy food, such as bloodworms, due to losing weight during the mating period.
So, Tiger Barbs are great companions to other specimens of the same kind, but may not display their best behavior when mixed with long flowing fins.
