Tiger Barb Shoal Question

R

rrkss

Biology is Fun
Dec 2, 2005
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I have 6 Regular Tiger Barbs and 2 Albino Tiger Barbs. The albino's are still jueveniles and rather small. The regulars for the exception of 2 of them are about 85% fully grown. The 2 regulars that are non adults are about 1 inch large and the albinos are 0.75 inches. For some reason the regulars stick together rather closely like I expected but the Albino's don't even bother to join the shoal. Both albinos hang out in a different area of the tank and don't even bother to interact with the rest of the tigers. Every now and then one albino chases the other albino around. I always thought that the albinos would shoal with their regular Tiger Barb counterparts. Is something wrong?

Water parameters are excellent but I will post the numbers in anyways.

Ammonia: 0.0
Nitrite: 0.0
Nitrate: < 10
pH: 7.0

Waterchange Routine: 50% every Friday or Saturday with a gravel vacuum. The tank has 2 filters one Fluval 204 and one Penguin Biowheel 200. They get cleaned every 2 weeks on a rotating bases (Pretty much I clean one filter a week). No sign of any diseases in this tank for a rather long time.
 
Do they school when you stick your hand in the tank? If so, maybe you need another larger fish to keep them in formation. When you figure out what fish that is, let me know because I've been looking for the answer to that question for about 3 weeks. :joke:
 
Shoaling (or herding) is a defense mechanism - large groups of identically marked animals are apt to confuse most predators by not providing a clear outline of a single animal at any one time. An animal not in keeping with the typical markings would attract unwanted attention from predators and put the entire herd/shoal at risk. Therefore normaly marked members of the group will instinctively gather with the ones like them in order to provide for maximum protection. A single instance of albinism is generally cast out and therefore it is not a common trait of survival, but a mutation that usually marks it out for death.

So...that being said, the previous post about putting more albinos in is probably a good one. It will give the two you have a greater feeling of safety and reduce their stress levels.
 
Maybe I should return the Albinos. My tank is somewhat at its limits in the amount of fish I am willing to maintain and adding 5 more albino Tiger Barbs would cause overstocking to occur. It would look beautiful but I would not want overcrowd the tank.
 
If I were to do this, the two new Tigers would be quarantined for a minimum of 14 days in a salt bath (I do this to all my fish to take out any ich parasites in the gills and 13 other unicellular parasites that I might bring in). Wouldn't that be dangerous to only have 2 Tigers in a tank. One would chase the other relentlously in that situation.
 
Possibly. My experience w/barbs hasn't been good. The issue I had was one male relentlessly "herding" his females to death - eventually he was alone and started to pick on other species and I had to euthanize him. Maybe if I had another male in there to spar with, he would have left the females alone sometimes. But I haven't kept barbs since then which is sad because tigers are gorgeous fish.

Maybe someone with more barb experience can weigh in...
 
Well I have an all barb tank consiting of Rosies, Tigers, Gold Barbs, Cherry Barbs and a Rainbow Shark. I only lost one fish to fin nipping over 2 months ago when I first introduced my first batch of tigers. I started with 3 albinos and 2 regulars but have since increased the school size to the current 6 regulars and 2 albinos. The fin nipping happened on one albino causing him to die. Since the Tiger Barbs have been in the shoal of 8 I've not seen any more fin nipping except the albinos never join the group. The other fish are left alone but there is a pecking order in the entire tank. I will sometimes see the alpha male Rosy Barb duke it out with the alpha male tiger barb (head-tale spinning contest) in order to maintain pecking order but other than that, the peace has been kept probably because I maintain the shoals in groups of 7 or more. But in my tank, the shark is on the top and even the alpha male Tiger Barb will get out of the shark's way. A 4 inch Rainbow Shark is a fish chasing machine at feeding time but normaly he will graze on algae and be rather docile except when the fish intrude in his territory.
 
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