The Pros & Cons of Tinfoil Barbs

You might think that tinfoil barbs' flashy scales and energetic behavior would make them awesome additions to a tank. The showy fish can certainly add some pizzazz to your aquarium, but the species' massive size and penchant for chomping down on plants makes the tinfoil barb suitable for some tanks and not so well-suited to others.

  1. Con: Large

    • Tinfoil barbs are big and beautiful, with an emphasis on big. They may start out small, but the fish can grow to a hulking 14 inches in length. If you have a small aquarium, you cannot stock them. Tanks 100 gallons or larger provide barbs with decent quality of life. While you can technically keep them in smaller tanks, they'll likely become stressed in such living quarters. Their large size also presents a problem if you plan on stocking or already do stock small fish and shrimp. As with most fish, tinfoil barbs will consider anything that can fit inside their mouths to be food.

    Pro: Peaceful

    • You don't have to worry about tinfoil barbs causing lots of trouble in your tank. The fish have peaceful personalities, coexisting well with most other peaceful tank mates, except those small enough to fit inside barbs' mouths. They also typically get along fine with semi-aggressive fish who spend their days swimming near the top of a tank. Aggressive middle- or bottom dwellers are not acceptable tank mates. Aquatic Community notes that barbs are excellent companions to nervous and shy fish who spend most of their time in seclusion, because barbs have a calming influence on the skittish swimmers.

    Con: Plant Eaters

    • Tinfoil barbs' gentleness does not extend to plants. The herbivores will nip at and eat live plants, which can cause you grief if you put a lot of time and money into your aquarium vegetation. While they won't devastate your green growth overnight, you will probably find the chunks of foliage that tinfoil barbs take out of plants to be an eyesore. If you add tinfoil barbs to your tank, you may want to keep artificial plants rather than live ones.

    Pro/Con: Schooling Species

    • Tinfoil barbs are a schooling species who do best when kept with about five or more of their kin. Schooling keeps fish who have attitudes from trying tricky business on the barbs and ultimately makes tinfoil barbs more comfortable. If you do not keep them in schools, they will become stressed. In some respects, the need to keep several barbs together is a con because having five or more fish of 14 inches in length swimming around limits how many other fish you stock. On the other hand, their occasional synchronized movements makes their schooling behavior fascinating to watch. They're always on the move, darting around and flashing the silver of their scales.