Barbs, Sharks And Garras

Members of the carp family, this group are popular shoaling fish with species available to suit most community aquaria.

Barbs vary in size and temperament with rowdy forms such as the Tiger barb giving more placid relatives a bad name. All are best kept in numbers that allow them to behave naturally and this often keeps even the more boisterous types too busy to cause mischief. These active fishes are happiest when given room to stretch their fins and some, such as Tinfoil barbs and Silver sharks, will rapidly outgrow all but the largest of tanks.

Although a few barbs are given a shark common name thanks to a similarity in body shape, that title is most frequently associated with the bottom-dwelling group best known through members such as the Red-tailed black shark. These territorial ‘sharkminnows’ are far more common in captivity than in the wild thanks to habitat loss and their popularity as pets has made their future more secure. Care is needed when mixing them with other fish, as they tend to be aggressive to similar looking species. Two options are worth considering in terms of keeping – either a single specimen housed alongside significantly smaller shoaling species, or a decent-sized group kept in an aquarium with plenty of cover in a similar fashion to some Malawi cichlids. In these situations, aggression is spread amongst a number of fish and they’re too busy interacting to pay much attention to other tankmates.

Garras are related to the sharkminnows and share some traits. They often have more of a taste for algae and one species has even risen to fame thanks to the dubious fashion for fish foot spas.

No mention of algae here would be complete without mentioning some of the best choices for controlling the type of growths that can challenge other types of grazers. Two species lumped with the shark-like Flying foxes earn their keep by munching on filamentous algae – the Siamese flying fox (or Siamese algae eater) and its close relative the Fishnet flying fox.