Tiger Barbs Cowering in a Corner...

C

corbinld

AC Members
Jul 11, 2006
10
0
0
I have 7 baby Tiger Barbs (the largest is barely 1 1/4") in a 20G species tank. I know that there is a habit of one of them establishing dominance as the "alpha male" and I clearly have that here with the larger one.

The problems is that ALL of the other barbs hide in the corner, only ocassionally "sneaking" out on a foray. The dominant one promptly nips them back into the corner when they do sneak out. Other than at feeding time, the rest of them hide in this corner all of the time.

My tank has lots of plastic plants & caves (none of which they really use) and hiding places. All water perameters are normal.

Originally, I had a red-finned rainbow shark in with them but moved him to another tank because I thought he was causing this cowering with his aggression. He's now happy & co-exiting well in my rainbow species tank.

But it's been about a month now and these barbs, which I've had in this tank for some 4 months or so altogether, are still hiding. I've never had barbs before, but nothing in my studies prepared me for such shy fish!

Any suggestions? Could it just be the personality of the Alpha male? And if I were to remove him from this tank, would it help?

I thought about putting in a tank divider between him & everyone else to see what would happen, but am loath to experiment with my fish...
 
have you tired rearranging the tank decor??

it may allow some time to re-establish territory(sometimes works in a cichlid tank).
 
star_rider said:
have you tired rearranging the tank decor??

it may allow some time to re-establish territory(sometimes works in a cichlid tank).
Click to expand...

Yes, I forgot to mention that I previously rearranged the tank. I did it once I took out the shark and once a couple of weeks later. Rearranging hasn't seemed to help...
 
You could take the ringleader out, and return him to the lfs. Tiger barbs do best when they are all about the same size, so there is no obvious fish to pick on.
 
Rearranging the tank usually doesn't work with barbs like it does with cichlids - they pretty much ignore a lot of the aquascaping we put in. You probably either need to remove the larger barb or add at least 2-3 larger barbs to diffuse the aggression - barbs tend to establish a pecking order and keep pecking daily. The little ones might not be able to handle that abuse all of the time. In my tank about 2/3 of the barbs are full grown and 1/3 are smaller - the larger barbs don't even seem to notice the smaller ones swimming amongst them. I would advise against the divider as barbs are social / schooling fish and single barbs tend not to do as well.
 
rrkss said:
Does this cowering happen after mealtime? It is completely normal for the Tigers to headstand and hide in a corner for an hour or so after eating.
Click to expand...

No, it just happens all day long really...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom