My Fish Are Proving To Be Incompatible In My New Tank. Help?

[GoinNuts]

I set up my 55 gallon a little over a month ago and started it out with 3 Green Tiger Barbs and 2 Bala Sharks to get the cycle established. Once my water levels tested good, I added 2 Flame Gouramis and about 5 days later I added 2 Angelfish and a Botia.

Everyone got along great for the first week, but then my barbs started nipping one of the angelfish and ended up killing him. Then my Botia bellied up, even though I never witnessed the barbs messing with him at all. I did notice them starting to nip the gouramis today and went ahead and removed them from the tank. Now the bala sharks are going nip-crazy on the remaining angelfish and the gouramis.

Now, many, many moons ago (like 20+ years ago) I used to own an aquarium store and, while I've obviously gotten a bit rusty on some things, I'm not a complete novice to fishkeeping. I can't recall having such problems establishing a community of semi-aggressive with this stock before.

So, what am I doing wrong? Are my schools too small? Did I add the new fish too soon? Did I just get 'bad' guys somehow?

TIA for advice you can offer.

Lisa

 

[Andy_B]

Isn't it recommended that you should keep at least 6 Barbs together to curb fin nipping.

 

[WILDER]

Get some more barbs to curb the fin nipping, also bala sharks need 120gal tanks as they get bigger.

 

[Andy_B]

Get some more barbs to curb the fin nipping, also bala sharks need 120gal tanks as they get bigger.

Don't they reach something like 15" when fully grown?
That's way to big for a 55gal!

 

[GoinNuts]

Isn't it recommended that you should keep at least 6 Barbs together to curb fin nipping.

Oops. I left out that I also added 3 Albino Tiger Barbs, so I did have 6.

Here is what I had:

3 Albino Tiger Barbs
3 Green Tiger Barbs
2 Flame Gouramis
2 Bala Sharks
1 Botia
2 Angelfish

(all fish are less than 2" at this time)

This is what I have left:

2 Bala Sharks
2 Flame Gouramis
1 Angelfish

The balas won't leave the angelfish or the gouramis alone today, so they may get removed here soon. But, if they decide to behave and end up staying, they won't reach max size for at least a year. At the time they get too big for the tank we'll have to decide to either a) donate them to our local aquarium park or B) get a bigger tank.

I guess my question is what semi-aggressive fish would I have better luck with? I'm most fond of the gouramis, so I'd like to build around them. My dh, on the other hand, prefers the balas. What to do, what to do?

Lisa

 

[demonmagus]

well the balas are too big, so forget them, also, they are peaceful fish, I think the gouramies are your best bet

 

[CFC]

Tiger barbs are infamous fin nippers and should never be kept with fish like angels or gouarmies which have their long trailing pectoral fins, if you wish to keep the gouramies the tiger barbs will have to go.

 

[KerriPaul]

Tiger barbs are infamous fin nippers and should never be kept with fish like angels or gouarmies which have their long trailing pectoral fins, if you wish to keep the gouramies the tiger barbs will have to go.

I can only echo that. The reason you lost a fish to dropsy was probably the stress of living with tiger barbs.