Tiger barb

Water parameters

Tolerated range for this species. Aim for the middle of each band rather than the extremes.

Tank and habitat

Substrate: any.

Behavior

Plant interaction: plant safe.

Feeding

Greedy omnivore that eats anything offered. Flake food, pellets, frozen bloodworm, frozen brine shrimp, live daphnia, blanched peas, blanched zucchini. They rush the surface at feeding time and eat fast. In community tanks, slower species struggle to get food when tiger barbs are present. Feed at multiple spots or use a mix of floating and sinking food so bottom-dwellers get a share. Twice-daily feeding keeps aggression lower than once-daily; well-fed tiger barbs nip less. Color quality improves with a varied diet that includes frozen and live food alongside dry staples.

Compatibility

• Notorious fin-nipper. Tiger barbs harass anything with long flowing fins: bettas, angelfish, fancy guppies, pearl gouramis, and long-finned tetras. This is the single most common compatibility mistake in the hobby and the source of a thousand "my tiger barbs killed my betta" forum posts.
• Keeping tiger barbs in groups of 8+ reduces nipping of tankmates significantly. In small groups (under 6), they redirect aggression outward. In large groups, they establish an internal pecking order and spend most of their energy on each other. The nipping doesn't disappear but it becomes tolerable for robust, short-finned tankmates.
• Good tankmates: other barbs (cherry, rosy, gold), larger tetras (black skirt, buenos aires), rainbow fish, loaches, and catfish. Anything fast, short-finned, and not delicate.
• Active schooling fish that dominate the middle of the tank. In a well-stocked community, they're a constant source of motion. They're the fish you see when you look at the tank; everything else orbits around them.

Origin and habitat

Puntigrus tetrazona, the tiger or Sumatra barb, is a bold, active barb best known for its four black bars on a pale gold body and for its fin-nipping. It is endemic to the eastern slope of Sumatra, recorded from the Kampar, Siak, Indragiri, Batanghari, Musi, and other basins, with the type from Lahat in the south; the Borneo fish often labelled tiger barb are actually related species. Kottelat set up the genus Puntigrus in 2013 for this Puntius tetrazona group, which also holds P. anchisporus, P. navjotsodhii, and P. pulcher from Borneo and P. partipentazona from Indochina. It lives in clear to turbid moderately flowing streams and swamp lakes, tolerating a fair range of conditions. It grows to about 7 cm. The wild gold-and-black fish is joined in the trade by green, albino, and red colour forms and by fluorescent GloFish strains. It has been introduced and become established outside its range, including in Singapore, Colombia, and the Philippines, and IUCN lists it as Least Concern. It is among the most widely sold aquarium fish in the world.

Breeding

An easy, prolific egg scatterer with no parental care. A conditioned plump female and a coloured male, moved to a planted breeding tank, spawn at first light, scattering a couple of hundred adhesive eggs onto plants and the bottom, and the adults eat the eggs the moment they get the chance, so they should be pulled out straight after. The eggs hatch in about a day to a day and a half, the fry are free-swimming a few days later and take baby brine shrimp, and the young grow fast, showing their bars within a few weeks. Commercial farms turn out tiger barbs by the million, and home breeding is a good beginner project.

Common problems

Fin-nipping is the defining problem, and the most common stocking mistake in the hobby: tiger barbs shred the long fins of bettas, angelfish, gouramis, and fancy guppies. Keeping them in a real group of eight or more turns much of that aggression inward onto their own pecking order and makes them tolerable alongside fast, short-finned tankmates, but it never disappears, so delicate or slow fish are off the list. Otherwise they are tough, with ich on stressed new fish the usual ailment and good tolerance of medications. They eat greedily and turn barrel-shaped and sluggish if overfed, so portions matter, and farm-raised batches sometimes carry internal worms that cause wasting. Faded colour almost always traces to a small group, poor diet, or harsh lighting rather than illness; a well-fed group of ten under warm light is strikingly coloured.

Bioload

Further reading

• Why your angelfish ate your neons
• The schooling number matters more than you think
• Stocking ideas by tank size