"Steve" wrote in message
...
lgb wrote:

I have no experience with cherry barbs, but I do remember reading in
more than one place that they could be agressive fin nippers.

That's tiger barbs which are nippy, and likely some others. Perhaps
there's confusion with rosy barbs?

Cherry barbs have been written up as very peaceful (shy, solitary
according to Baensch). I had cherry barbs in small schools without
problems. They were quite peaceful, long-lived, and they even
reproduced in a planted 15-gal aquarium. I had 2 + generations of them.

Netmax's experience does not fit with mine, but he had a very large
quantity of cherry barbs. For what it's worth .

Steve

I agree with Steve that the behaviour was probably not representative of
your typical home aquarium. These fish come from the family cyprinidae
which appears to be a bit of a catch-all, including danios, barbs,
rasboras and sharks such as the rainbow and red-tail (quite a span of
behaviours).

If you only look at the Puntius genus (which includes Cherry barbs and
Tiger barbs), you could generally say that other than the Tiger barbs,
the rest are a well deserved group. Specifically however, there are
several which fit the description of not being model citizens ;~) such as
Puntius dunckeri, binotatus, everetti, ticto, unitaeniatus and especially
filamentosus. While few of these actually make there way into the
average pet shop, your meek mild Cherry barb does have some black sheep
in the family ;~).
--
www.NetMax.tk