Hey all I have a question I hope you can help me with since I think my LFS may have given me bad advise. I recently added a 29 gallon tank to my collection and decided I wanted to try an aggressive tank since my 10 gallon was a community one. So I got some flora max substrate, a handful of plants, a piece of mopani wood, a T5 light and a 50 gallon power filter. Once that was all setup I went to the local fish store to get some fish to cycle the tank. I told them I wanted an aggressive tank. They told me I could go with African Cichlids, but then I could only ever have African Cichlids, or Tiger Barbs and then I could add other aggressive fish or maybe some Oscars.

Well since that allowed me the variety I wanted I went with the Tiger Barbs. They put three of them in a bag and said for the size tank I had I could either do another 3 tiger barbs, or one slightly bigger fish. I wanted variety so I asked what bigger fish they would recommend. They showed me an iridescent shark. I thought it looked cool, plus who doesn't like sharks (and yes i understand it is really a catfish). Well I started out worried for the barbs, even though I knew they could be fiesty themselves but it turns out the iridescent is a big pushover and the barbs chase him all over the place. Not only that but I found out this type of shark gets huge.

So what should I do here. Should I take the shark back and tell them to give me more appropriate or am I over thinking this and will this setup actually be ok?

Thanks for any help.