Tiger barbs and me go back a long way! In 1938, William T. Innes wrote in Exotic Aquarium Fishes "One of the prettiest sights imaginable is a 25 gallon tank containing about 50 of these lively beauties". As always, Innes was spot on. Yet tiger barbs seem to cause more trouble than any other non-cichlid! Like some of the larger tetras, this species can be aggressive, but can be kept succesfully if you follow the three golden rules: Only keep them with suitable tankmates. Fish with long trailing fins (e.g. angelfish, gouramis, bettas) are bad choices, as are fish which are too passive (e.g small livebearers) or even more aggressive (e.g. most non-dwarf cichlids).
The more you keep, the more the aggression will be diffused.
Personally, I would never recommend keeping less than eight.
You MAY get away with six.
Four is asking for trouble!
These are very active fish and need a tank of commensurate size. Never break the standard stocking guideline unless you want trouble:
1cm of fish / 2 litres (1 inch / US gallon)

That means for six 5cm/2 inch fish, you need at least a 60litre/12 US gallon tank; for eight, 80 litres/16 gallons; and for ten, 100 litres/20 US gallons, excluding other tankmates. Don't expect to cheat and get way with it in the long term!


How do I know all this? When I had my first tropical tank as a kid, I succumbed to a bad case of Noah Syndrome (two of them, two of them and a pair of them...). Into my shiny new 10 gallon tank went a pair of red wagtail platies and a pair of tiger barbs. Within an hour, the platies were dead and the tiger barbs had been returned to an understanding LFS owner.
So aggression can be managed, and tiger barbs can be kept successfully, until it comes to breeding. You can't spawn tiger barbs as a large shoal - the non-spawners follow the breeders, eating caviar! So you follow the classic pattern for spawning egg scatterers and place a pair in a specially prepared breeding tank. And that's where the trouble starts...

1/5/99: I bought 5 fish from one store and 5 unrelated fish from another store late in 1998, as is my usual practice for species where there are no identification problems (e.g geographical races), so as to obtain vigorous outbred fry. After six months growth and conditioning in a 120 litre tank, I had seen then spawning several times. I chose the best pair and placed them in a 50 litre tank with a sponge filter and several nylon spawning mops. Since they were spawning in the community tank, I did not follow my normal practice on this occasion and condtion the male and female separately for 7-10 days before placing them together in the breeding tank. Next morning, there was no spawn, so I left them. By evening, the female was dead! I could not be certain if they had spawned when I was not present, eaten the eggs and then the male had killed the female, so I selected another plump female and this time placed the pair in a 10 litre spawning container with a mesh bottom to allow eggs to fall though and prevent them from being eaten. The fish did not like being confined in this small space, and by the next evening, this female was dead also!


12/5/99: I chose a different, well-conditioned pair and placed them in a 25 litre tank containing a sponge filter, lots of plastic plants and a layer of glass marbles (ToysR'Us!) at the bottom of the tank to protect the eggs. Although I don't normally feed fish in a spawning tank, this time I added some Daphnia to occupy the breeders. This and the cover provided seems to have worked!

17/5/99: There are several drawbacks to using marbles to collect eggs:

Small fish can become trapped in them
It's hard to see if there are any eggs unless you can view the tank from below
In the evening, I saw the female consistently poking around the base of one of the plants, possibly eating eggs, although I couldn't see any, so I removed the adults to another tank.
21/5/99 (day 2): Several fry observed in the breeding tank! Water conditions 8°dH, 3°KH, pH 7.2, 78°F (unlike many barbs, B.tetrazona is not too fussy about water chemistry for spawning, as long as the water is not too hard or alkaline). The fry were about 4mm long, quite mobile and had no obvious yolk sacs. My guess is that they were 48 hours old at this stage, since 2 days is the usual sort of incubation time for barb eggs. I was able to count about 5 fry after removing some of the marbles, but did not want to injure any fry, which are very delicate at this stage.
More info on this species:
Baensch Aquarium Atlas, vol 1, page 400:

(Amazon.co.UK)

22/5/99 (day 3): I carefully removed the rest of the marbles. Fry are now very mobile but stick very close to surfaces (tank bottom and sides), are very elongated and have an irridescent bronze stripe like young glowlight tetras. They are actively foraging and take newly hatched baby brine shrimp at this stage.

29/5/99 (day 12): Largest fry are now 8mm TL (total length)/6mm SL (standard length - from the tip of the nose to the base of the tail) and starting to get black bands. Feeding well on microworms in the morning and brine shrimp in the evening. No losses. Can now count at least 16 fry!

31/5/99 (day 14): Largest fry are now 9mm TL/7mm SL and obviously barb-like: less elongated, forked tail and 4 obvious black bars (tetrazona, remember?).

7/6/99 (day 21): Largest fry are now 11mm TL/7mm SL.

14/6/99 (day 2: Largest fry are now 12mm TL/8mm SL. Red colour appearing. Moved to 60 litre tank for growout.


21/6/99 (day 35): Largest fry are now 13mm TL/10mm SL, filling out & with nice metallic green colour on black stripes.

9/7/99 (day 53): Largest fry (females) are now 19mm TL/13mm SL. Sexable.


24/7/99 (day 53): Sold all 28 fry (25mm TL/20mm SL) to make room for new species!



This is another


Tiger Barbs are instantly recognisable by almost everyone. Most people make the same mistake with their first tank and buy all their fish in twos. If you do that with these fish you will soon have a situation that requires you to intervene because they will be nipping the fins of all the other fish. These fish must be kept in a shoal, their squabbling will then be confined to each other and the other fish will be left alone.

They will eat almost every thing on offer but if you want to breed them they will require extra protein in there diet. Freeze dried Tubifex is one of the best foods for this along with other live food.

If you want to spawn the fish on purpose and raise a brood of fry, the sexes will need to be seperated or there is every chance the fish will breed in the conditioning tank. Healthy Tiger Barbs will frequently spawn in a community tank although it is extremely unlikely any fry will survive.The sexes can be told apart because the female is slightly smaller and more plump.

Once seperated feed them on conditioning food as mentioned above. Keep the temp at 80f and on the 3rd or 4th day let the fish in together in the breeding tank which has been set up as follows. Temp 80f slightly soft acidic water, with a mature sponge filter and either two spawning mops or two bunches of Cabomba. Spawning should comence almost right away or if the fish aren't quite ready within a day or so. The spawning involves the male(s) chasing the female(s) around and through the spawning mops or plants leaving a trail of eggs and sperm in their wake.Once the spawning is over remove the fish or the eggs will be eaten.

These fish lay semi adhesive eggs and they will be scatered all over the tank and stuck to everything. The eggs hatch and the fry will be free swimming at around day 5 at 80f. They are large enough to accept newly hatched brine shrimps or finely powdered flake food. But the better growth rates will come with the brine shrimp. A number of similar barbs are bred in an identical way to this. Unless you have a lot of tank space for growing on some fry may have to be culled or the entire brood may suffer, because these fish have large broods.

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Cherry Barbs spawning. Photo By: Cillana

This is the same type of set up that can be used by many small Barbs. Here plants have been used instead of an artificial spawning mop, both will work equally well.