Tinfoil Barb

[WarriorZ]

Anyone have any Tinfoil Barbs in a community tank? Plus the tank has java fern in it (read that they eat plants).

Just love the look of them.

Angles, Balas, Irr Sharks, in the 150G tank now.

 

[JamisonBWolsh]

I would try to get ALBINO tinfoil Barbs. They really are a nice fish. Pearl white with red eyes. You do need to keep them in groups of 3. In your tank, they wouldl look magnificient!

As for plants. No way. Will never happen. Anything plant related will be eaten by these guys. I tried this one plant (forgot the name) that supposedly fish hate. Well, my tinfoils made a salad and enjoyed it. In fact, they want more.

As for their interaction with other fish. Mine totally ignores all other fish. I even keep white Cloud mountain minnows in the same tank and my 8-10 inch tinfoils dont even bother with them. Maybe because I raised the tinfoils since they were babies with the WCMM's?

 

[JamisonBWolsh]

I forgot to add. It will be hard to find these guys. ALBINO TINFOILS are extremely hard to find. I would hold off buying reg. tinfoils.because it is WORTH it once you find these wondefull fish.

 

[Mr. Pez]

I had two tinfoil barbs...They are a joy to keep. They have some of the biggest personalities in the fish world (Like oscars and arowanas). I also grew mine from 1.5 inch babies into foot long monsters. Though they lack teeth they are calculating killers. They managed to flush, hunt down and kill 4 large serpae tetras using a tandom flushing method. One would flush them out of the plants while the other would ambush them and they would take turns doing this. Within 30 seconds all the tetras were gone. We were using the tetras to cycle the tank and that was the first time the barbs saw the tetras.

There are different varietys of tinfoils
- Regular red-fin silver
- Albino
- Blushing albino (albino scales, dark blue eyes, red cheeks)
- Gold

I would recommend keeping a school of atleast 4 in a "tinfoil barb only" tank. Or atleast with something that can swim as fast and compete for food as well as they can. They love to eat anything!

As for plants I've kept mine with crypts, java ferns, hygrophila, algea....Basically idiot proof plants.

Hope this helped

 

[olwiggum]

I've read that Tinfoils were pretty peaceful.... and mine used to be. I think they got some of my other fish though. They are only about 2 inches or so. I moved my 10 gallon community fish into a 30 gallon. I had 2 Rummynose Tetras and bought 3 more after the fish had been in the new tank for a couple of days. 3 of the Rummynoses disappeared overnight. One more of them disappeared another day or two later.
Did they get a bad case of territoriality? Is that a word?

 

[JamisonBWolsh]

I dont know why your tinfoils is hunting serpaes???? Mine does not even bother the white cloud mountain minnows. I also have 4 small petricola catfish and 3 cories in there and they arent even bothered...

Do you feed live food to them? Maybe that would be the reason??? I feed flakes and brine shrimp. The most peacefull fish I have

 

[Mr. Pez]

Things I've given them for food throughout their life are:
-Hikari cichlid gold pellets
-Hikari algea wafers
-Hikari sinking wafers
-Big Al's staple flake food
-Nutrafin tropical flake food
-Lettuce
-Freeze dried bloodworms
-Tetra krill-E
-Frozen bloodworms
They have never seen a feeder goldfish/guppy/rosie red in their life.

They also acted like cleaner wrasses picking/eating ich parasites off the gourami when they were small. I've never seen this before - Has anyone else?