Kissing Tiger Barbs?

[Flex26]

A couple of my albino tiger barbs seem to do some little dance in a circle while kissing. It's kinda funny to watch. One of the 'normal' tiger barbs came to investigate. But one of the kissers chased him away.

So what are they doing? Some sort of courtship ritual? Fighting? Just goofing around?

 

[Luca]

i have exactly the same question, well use to. I had two normal tiger barbs who did this all the time. Twas really strange. I thought it was mating behaviour but then they are semi-aggressive so it could be territorial displays. Anyways i've sold 'em now but would be still keen to hear if anyone knows conclusively what this is!

 

[tetra girl]

i've heard that when tiger's are ready to mate the males nose goes red. i don't know if this would still happen with an albino but i guess so. check to see what colour it's nose. if its not red then i assume its territorial

 

[pyackel]

Way cool! Two of my Tiger Barbs did the same thing for a couple of days - chasing and kissing eachother!

 

[colesea]

It is fighting behavior. I had a school of green tiger barbs, five of them, and they started to do this dance. One by one the next day after the dance I'd find a dead barb. The most dominate fish killed off the other four of the school. That dominate fish is still alive today (four years later) but I have not put any more barbs in the tank because he will probably kill them all again. He roundly gets his arse kicked by the rainbow shark now, and is definately the omega fish of the tank<G>. See, what goes around comes around.
~~Colesea

 

[Jubilee]

It seems to me to be 2 females sparring.

 

[phOOey]

Tiger barbs do this to establish a pecking order. When a new school is put into a tank they do this to find out who is the strongest to the weakest, and then the strongest one is usually the fish at the front of the school. But when two tiger barbs are about the same strength they will fight quite a lot of the time untill one eventually gives up.

 

[k-ven]

I have 5 tiger barbs and 3 green barbs the tiger barbs never did that and when I got my green barbs two of them did that for about a day. Now the rainbow shark chases everybody and the barbs don't do that much anymore. they are in a 29g