Can Cherry Shrimp Live With Sumatra barb?

Tiger barbs are boisterous fish with a well earned reputation for nipping at anything timid, slow moving or trailing, and a cherry shrimp is all three once it is out in the open. Nothing in the barb's own profile singles out shrimp, but an omnivorous, food driven fish kept in a group is not one that leaves a slow 3 cm invertebrate alone once it notices it.

Water is not the obstacle: 20 to 26 °C and pH 6.5 to 8 covers both, the cherry shrimp's whole range sitting inside the barb's wider one.

Buy the full group of 8 to 10 barbs so their squabbling stays inside the school rather than falling on the shrimp, and plant heavily with moss and dense stem plants so the shrimp have somewhere the barbs cannot follow. A colony that starts with five or more adults and heavy cover can hold its numbers even while losing most of its young; without that cover, do not expect a breeding population to establish.