Normal for a Tiger Barb Looks Like Trouble
A tiger barb school is boisterous by design, so your briefing's first job is to stop your sitter intervening in ordinary barb life. Short chases, brief squabbles over a food flake, and constant restless patrolling of the middle water are the healthy picture, with black stripes bold and the orange edges of the fins lit. Show the sitter that energy in person and say clearly that separating a chaser, netting a bossy fish, or tapping the glass to break things up are all mistakes.
The Head-Down Hang and Other Real Warnings
A tiger barb resting nose-down at a steep angle, barely moving, is the classic sign your sitter must not shrug off. One fish doing it briefly after a heavy feed can be unremarkable, but a barb that hangs head-down for hours, drifts away from the school, or shows stripes faded to a dull grey-brown is a same-day call to you, with a photo. Several barbs at the surface gasping is a group emergency: check the filter is running and the surface is moving, then call before anything else. A fish being genuinely hunted — chased without pause, nipped until its fins shred, hiding and refusing food — is also a report, not a sitter decision, because moving either fish in your absence rearranges the school's whole hierarchy for your return.
Hardy Does Not Mean Indestructible
A tiger barb has a tough reputation, and your briefing should retire it, because sitters relax around fish they believe cannot be harmed. Barbs tolerate a wide range, but they live in the water their feeding creates, and a school of greedy, fast-growing fish in a fouled tank loses colour, then appetite, then members. The mechanical checks are the same as any tank — filter running, heater steady on the thermometer, lid on — but say them anyway and have the sitter repeat them, since hardy fish get the least careful handovers.
Portion the Food for a Greedy School
A tiger barb eats as if the food might be withdrawn, so never let a sitter judge a portion by the school's enthusiasm. Measure each feed yourself into containers and explain that the frenzy at the surface is theatre the fish perform at any quantity; what matters is that almost nothing reaches the gravel. Barbs that bloat on a sitter's generous hand can end up swimming oddly and hanging head-down, manufacturing exactly the symptom this briefing teaches them to fear. If a feed is spilled in by accident, the instruction is to tell you and skip the next one, not to attempt a gravel clean or a large water change in a tank they do not know.
Fins, Spots, and the Fish at the Edge
Ask for a daily look at the school's edges, literally and socially: the barb at the margin of the group, the one whose tail has new splits, the individual whose black stripes no longer match the others. White spots scattered over several fish, a fuzzy patch, or rapid breathing across the school all go to you by photo the same day, and the sitter adds nothing to the water and buys nothing on the way home.
Hand Over the Baseline, Then Step Back
Do one feed together before you leave and let the sitter watch the frenzy settle into patrol, so their memory holds the school's ordinary noise level. Then make the written version match it: busy is fine, quiet is news. Putting that baseline, the head-down rule, and your measured portions into KinsLe as a Care Pass gives the person at your tank a way to check a subdued barb school against your description, and to call you about the one still fish while the rest are still loudly fine.