Tiger Barb Aggression

[ntK]

Hey everyone, I've had my tank running for about 2 weeks now. For cycling I decided to try out Tetra Safe Start, however I did not want to test it on the $200 worth of african cichlids I will be stocking. So I bought 8 tiger barbs to feed the bacteria ammonia w/ Safe Start. My water has been testing fine, for a little I had a small ammonia spike up to about 1ppm but some water changes got that under control. My latest test results are:

Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrites: 0ppm
Nitrates about 5ppm

So it should be fully cycled, though I still need to keep it cycling for a few more weeks until my breeder is ready to sell me the fish I need.

Now on to my problem: this is a 55g tank, 48x13x20 stocked currently with 8 tiger barbs. I'm having extreme aggression issues, I've noticed 2 of the bigger males are constantly fighting and chasing every single one of the other fish away. At first it was fine, they would just school together and not have any problems, but it has gotten out of hand. I noticed yesterday that one of my smaller females had very dull coloring I'm assuming this is a sign of stress. Also all the other fish just hang out around the top corners of the tank while the 2 bigger males pretty much enjoy the entire rest of the tank to themselves.

Upon further investigation I believe I may only have 2 female tiger barbs, and 6 males. Now I really haven't researched much on these guys, as I'm planning on stocking fully Mbuna, but I'm assuming that female to male ratio is the problem.

What are my choices here to solve this problem? I don't plan on keeping these fish, but I don't want any to die or get sick either. My best guess would be to either go with adding a dither of some type or more tiger barbs. Just need some opinions from you guys who actually know about this fish. Thanks

 

[millym]

hi constant scraps for dominance is normal tiger barb behaviour esp with lots of males, do you have lots of plants or hiding places ???the ones getting picked on need places to escape to . hopefully they will settle down after a while when one barb becomes 'king' of the tank for a while. but we did have one teeny green tiger who was an absolute terror a few years ago - he bullied every other much bigger older barb we had to the point where we never saw the rest of them at lights on time - they were terrified of the little horror, but one day the worm turned as they say tiny terror got taken on & beaten by an oldie & everthing settled down. we have kept tigers for over 7 years & have found whenever there is more males you do get more fighting ( damned boys!!) adding more barbs will help spread out the aggression and i would suggest is you make sure there are places like ive said where the bullied can escape to.
also i should say tigers are not good fish to start a tank with as they are very sensitive to water quality. what are you going to do with them when you get the mbuna???

 

[ntK]

hi constant scraps for dominance is normal tiger barb behaviour esp with lots of males, do you have lots of plants or hiding places ???the ones getting picked on need places to escape to . hopefully they will settle down after a while when one barb becomes 'king' of the tank for a while. but we did have one teeny green tiger who was an absolute terror a few years ago - he bullied every other much bigger older barb we had to the point where we never saw the rest of them at lights on time - they were terrified of the little horror, but one day the worm turned as they say tiny terror got taken on & beaten by an oldie & everthing settled down. we have kept tigers for over 7 years & have found whenever there is more males you do get more fighting ( damned boys!!) adding more barbs will help spread out the aggression and i would suggest is you make sure there are places like ive said where the bullied can escape to.
also i should say tigers are not good fish to start a tank with as they are very sensitive to water quality. what are you going to do with them when you get the mbuna???

Yeah I have an insane amount of caves and rocks for hiding places, they just don't seem to use them as much. I've noticed now that the majority of the group are very healthy looking, but I have a small male and small female that don't seem to eat as much and kind of stay away from the group most of the time. I have since added more rock and rearranged the rockwork in my tank, and they now have been getting along much better since that. I'm guessing I broke up some territories, or just provided more caves or something to thin out aggression.

Also, I was very safe with my water when using Tetra safe start and these fish. I constantly tested the parameters, and at any slight notice of ammonia or nitrite I did a 25% water change. The tank is fully cycled now, after not much time (I guess Safe Start works decently). The highest ammonia spike I saw was .25ppm which I dealt with immediately.

I'm going to be seeing my local breeder this next week to pickup my mbuna, and I already have a friend with an established 75g community tank with barbs that I will be giving these to. So hopefully they will have a good home, that is... once I can catch them