Golden Barbs eating at a wound?

[fishstyles]

So I have an issue, I have a community planted tank. I have 13 Golden Barbs, 3 are in the bigger size while the other 10 are much smaller. So one of the bigger Barbs has a wound mostly likely from bumping in to wood in the aquarium. However the issue I am finding is that the smaller barbs then constantly eat at the wound making the larger barb weaker and stressed.

I am going to have to take the larger Barb out and heal because if I leave it much longer I can see it only resulting in to a fatality. It's horrible to watch, question is this has happened more than once. Does anyone know why they're doing this or how to prevent it?

It's really sad and is discouraging me from keeping golden barbs full stop.

 

[Colin_T]

All fish will pick at other fish if they are sick or injured. They eat whenever they can and if they see another fish with fleshy bits hanging off it, they will eat it.

If you feed the fish more food, more often, it can reduce the likelihood of the others eating an injured fish, but you need to make sure the filter can deal with the extra food and you need to do more water changes and gravel cleans to keep the tank clean.

You need to separate the injured fish straight away and find out why they are being injured. When you know how they are being injured, you can try to prevent it from happening and not have to worry about them eating each other.

 

[gilpi]

As bad as it sounds, they do this because they are fish and this is what fish do, many species will pick on the weak till it eventually dies either from the injuries or stress. In a confined space the weak has no place to hide so perhaps placing the injured fish in a separate tank is a good idea.

 

[fishstyles]

Yeah thanks for the replies guys. I did figure fish do this as it's purely a way to survive. Survival of the fittest.

I have put the two wounded barbs in their own tank for now.

 

[Colin_T]

You might have a cannibal fish in the tank that is causing this. Monitor them and see if any are going around attacking fish. If there is one causing this, get rid of that fish.