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Is my 1 male and 2 female a nice trio for a 29 gallon? tank mates are a few lemon tetras and a bolivian ram. They seem to be getting along quite nicely in the tank.

Shoaling fish, try to get about 6 or more and they will be happier.

From the profile on this site:

Comments: The Cherry Barb should be kept alone in a small tank or in pairs in a larger tank. They can be kept in larger numbers if the vegetation is dense.

Cherries don't school very much, from what I've seen. Even in the LFS, they're all over the tank, don't really interact as a school. In my experience, I found that if the tank is smaller, a trio works better than a pair (as in guppies, 2F/1M as the male can harass the female).

I see conflicting info on their preferences all over the net... Since mine seem to be healthy and happy and shocking cardinal red, I'm going to assume that being kept in a non-school/shoal environment is agreeable to them, even if the tank allows for a larger group. I kept them originally in a five gallon tank and they did well. They're also doing extremely well in my 20 long.

The profile indicates that they are shy... I don't know if I just have weird cherry barbs or what, but they're pretty active and don't have problems being the first to food or darting around the tank.

Side note, I had what I was sure was a 2F/1M group, but one day a female started getting redder... and redder, and now I have two bright red apparently male cherry barbs. I don't know if the one was just so very submissive and the other dominant or what, but I was sure he was female (as did the knowledgeable LFS guy I spoke to and who pulled him from the tank for me) and then he wasn't... Either that or SHE has the brightest female coloring I've ever seen.

As another side note, the cherries are the most difficult fish to catch in my tank, and I say this with the experience of three different moves in six months. Fast little buggers, they are!

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

It might be that the advice on this site is self contradicting.In smaller tanks there will be space competition, therefore obviously you would only keep a few, but the small tank advice may be the problem in itself. Ive seen large shoals in large tanks look abolutely fine, no particular aggression , nice condition, good colour.

It might actually be that they arent especially suited to small tanks behaviourally, and therefore shoal numbers have to be avoided to stop aggression. This would be typical barb behaviour really,just perhaps misiterpreted by folks who try them in small aquaria.

Therefore to me its logical to go for a bigger group in larger tanks, and preserve a normal social grouping or shoal.

I personally think its just that their shoal dynamic requires room, and because people see them as a small fish , they just put them into small tanks, and the shoal dynamic goes to hell, due to typical resource competition behaviour.

Its not unusual for fish in different sized setups to show adaptive changes to the shoal dynamic.Thats why folks with bigger tanks recommend bigger tanks- because you get to see more normal behaviour.

So do i think its normal for cherries to live in groups of two or three in a small tank? -nope! But is it essential to stop them harrassing each other to death in small space? -yep! Can you keep more in bigger tanks? -absolutely!

Its not that theres only one way to keep a cherry barb, its that people interpret the behaviour differently according to tanksize and shoal sizes, and that can be confusing because the behaviour of the cherry barbs themselves changes. This is not however unusual.

IMHO I reckon 29 is plenty of space for a small shoal .

Everything I've read about cherries mentions keeping them in pairs, that they're not schooling/shoaling fish.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
There is water at the bottom of the ocean

Most of the serious literature ive read on them indicated they they are loose schoolers, not likely to bunch up unless threatened, but shoalers nonetheless. Pairing them off is an aquarium keepers habit. Its not how they live in nature, or neccesarily how they prefer to live in captivity, its the tanksizes that necessitate pairs instead of shoals. Its folks perception of what constitutes a shoal thats the problem, in anything up to say a 55gal , loose schoalers dont bunch up, they look to be ignoring each other but in fact remain within visual contact in a space that size and so dont need to bunch up. Somehow this got interpreted as being that they prefer to pair rather than shoal. Look at all the biotope observations and watch them in bigger display tanks and youll see what i mean.

In my 29gal I have a 1 Male and 2 Females. It was my original thought that they do not school at all but after thinking it over some more it does seem that they are in deed within visual contact of each other. It does however look like they are marking territory with the females on opposite sides of the tank and the male station in the middle, the positions never change as far as who is on which side. The male tends to be bit aggressive when the sword tails go near the females he will chase them away and then go back to his spot. I don’t know if this is typical behavior.

"No whammy, No whammy, No whammy, STOP!!"

1984-Michael Larsen On Press Your Luck

The male and two females in my tank actually trio most of the time, the eat together, sleep together, and the male takes turns chasing the two females around the tank when he is feeling frisky.

I have not noticed them being territorial, but I have noticed their loose schooling behavior. Even with my small trio they do socially interact with eachother, and I find them much more entertaining than my lemon tetras, hence why I was asking what made a good group of them.

Since I do not have money for a 55+ gallon tank(although I would love one!) and my apartment forbids tanks over 30 gallons in size, I must keep my 29 gallon tank.

So, everyone seems in agreement that while they would be happier in larger numbers in a big tank, is it ok for the fish to be kept in their little trio in my 29? They seem quite happy and social, and not timid what so ever. I note especially that after I added the second female, any timidness they had when surfacing with the tetras to grab food or their staying away from the lemons when they were displaying and playing tag was gone.

While they do keep to themselves, they are hardly shy anymore, and seem happy and healthy.

so, the general agreement is that 3 is a good number for my size of tank?

EDIT: the tank they live in is VERY tall if that makes a differance in any way...here is a link to a photo of it:
http://home.comcast.net/~fitzworld/twentynine.JPG