rm
Passport
- Family
- Barbs
- Grows to
- 6 cm (2.4")
- Lives
- 5–7 years
- Temperament
- Semi aggressive
- Care
- Beginner
- Swims
- Mid-water
- Keep
- In a group of 8 or more
- Water
- 20–26 °C (68–79 °F)
Indonesia
Care requirements
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On record for Tiger Barb: adult size, lifespan, minimum tank, temperature, ph, hardness, minimum group, diet, care level, swim level, tank length.
A figure that is not on record is left out rather than guessed. One marked Suggested comes from keeping knowledge rather than a page.
- Minimum tank 76 L / 20.0 US gal
- pH 5–8
- Hardness 1–20 dGH
- Diet omnivore
- Tank length 80 cm minimum
Keeping notes
Nips fins when kept in too small a group or too small a tank. In a proper shoal with room to run it mostly behaves. Keep it away from slow, long-finned fish all the same.
Care notes written from general aquarium knowledge, not from the cited sources.
About
The fish with the worst reputation in the hobby, and most of it is earned by how they're kept rather than by what they are. Tiger barbs nip fins. Whether they nip *your* fish comes down almost entirely to the size of the group and the space you've given them.
Keep them in a proper group and they spend their aggression on each other — constant chasing, displaying and jostling inside the shoal, which is normal and looks alarming the first time you watch it. Keep them in threes or fours and all that energy goes outward, and the nearest long-finned fish pays for it.
They're fast, greedy and never still. Nothing slow is getting its share of the food.
Tank setup
Start with numbers, because that's the whole answer to the aggression problem. A small group is a nipping group. Buy the shoal, not a starter handful you intend to add to later.
Give them length. They're active swimmers that patrol back and forth, so a long tank beats a tall one.
Break up the sightlines. Planting and hardscape that interrupt a clear run make a real difference to how much of that chasing turns into damage.
Choose tank mates for speed and fin length rather than for temperament. A fast, plain-finned fish will be fine alongside them; anything long-finned or slow is a target no matter how peaceful it is.
Feeding
Tiger barbs are omnivorous and enthusiastic to the point of being a nuisance. They'll take flake, pellets, frozen and live food, and they'll take it before anything else in the tank gets a look in.
Feed in more than one place. In a mixed community the practical difficulty with tiger barbs isn't aggression at all — it's that the slower fish quietly go without.
Some vegetable content keeps their colour up.
Avoid: overfeeding, which is easy to do given how convincingly they beg.
Filtration and flow
They like flow and well-oxygenated water, and they'll swim against a current all day. Otherwise they're undemanding on filtration, and hardier than their reputation suggests.
Your stocking is usually the constraint rather than the filter. A proper shoal of barbs is a real bioload, and people size the tank for the fish they bought rather than for the group they ought to have.
With plants
Safe with plants. They don't dig or eat them, and dense planting genuinely reduces the nipping by breaking up the open water they chase across.
Plant the sides and back heavily and leave a swimming lane down the middle. They'll use it.
Health
They're robust. Most problems in a tiger barb tank are injuries rather than illness, and the injuries are usually on the other fish.
Fin damage among the barbs themselves is normal within a shoal and heals up. Persistent damage on a tank mate means the stocking is wrong, and no medication will fix that.
They'll take ich after temperature swings, as most barbs do.
Breeding
Straightforward, and mostly deliberate. They're egg scatterers that spawn among fine-leaved plants and then eat the eggs immediately afterwards with enthusiasm.
The standard approach is a separate tank with a mesh or marbles, a conditioned pair, and pulling the adults out promptly. The fry are free-swimming within days and grow fast.
It won't happen usefully in a community tank — the eggs are gone within minutes, often to the parents.
Tank mates
Avoid10
- Convict Cichlid Convict Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Tiger Barb at 6 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Jewel Cichlid Jewel Cichlid grows to 15 cm against Tiger Barb at 6 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Least Killifish Tiger Barb grows to 6 cm against Least Killifish at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Scarlet Badis Tiger Barb grows to 6 cm against Scarlet Badis at 2 cm, big enough to eat it.
- Common Goldfish Tiger Barb is not safe with Common Goldfish: barbs and common goldfish are a bad pairing.
Only with care39
- Kribensis Tiger Barb is semi-aggressive and Kribensis is peaceful.
- Panda Garra Tiger Barb is semi-aggressive and Panda Garra is peaceful.
- Amano Shrimp Tiger Barb is a risk to Amano Shrimp: barbs and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
- Angelfish Tiger Barb is a risk to Angelfish: angelfish and barbs are a pairing to watch.
- Bamboo Shrimp Tiger Barb is a risk to Bamboo Shrimp: barbs and shrimp and yabbies are a pairing to watch.
No conflict is recorded with the other 58 species in the database, so nothing to flag. 1 species is not covered at all, so they could not be judged either way.