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Hi,

I've got a shoal of longfin barbs and i have a couple of questions....

Each evening the 2 males out of the 6 really colour up and start fighting, they swing each other round by the mouth. They also get white spots around the mouth which i think is a sign of breeding....

But even with four females in the tank they never breed....is it because i need only 1 male in the tank?

Is this a Puntius arulius were talking about?

yeah sorry i should have said

Well, what they are doing is normal, they have similarities in sexual behaviour to tigerbarbs, ergo- that they can be so competetive about breeding rights that they can actually kill each other unless in a suitable sized group where the aggression is dissipated amoung many individuals. The solution to the problem, odd as it may seem might be the addition of more males rather than less. In species where male combat is normal it is actually staged for the benefit of the females and some combat may have to ensue before a female allows a male to spawn with her. Sometimes with two equally matched males present they will always interfere with each others breeding efforts, and I have a feeling this is a species that will only breed successfully when there are enough fish present for the odd pair to slip away unnoticed to do the dirty deed, and this takes the confusion of a bigger shoal.

Breeding itself may depend on more factors than simply the shoal dynamic though, it will depend on the age of the fish, I assume they dont breed properly until at least 14 months of age, and the females might not go into oestrus without some pre-breeding conditioning, namely the introduction of some livefoods into the diet. The presence of other fish like predatory cichlids etc, or a lack of suitable spawning areas may also contribute to a lack of spawning. Sometimes females might need a change in temps or water quality to stimulate them to breed.

my experience with arulius barbs is that they breed very easily. I've kept them for a number of years, first in a 15 gal. and later in a 40 gal. and they never stopped breeding in either tank, even though I fed them nothing but flakes at the time (we all learn along the way
My initial "school" was 3 (1 male, 2 females) and in the larger tank I kept 15, of which 8 were "home bred".

If the fighting continues, it would be best to either increase the school with additional females (if your tank allows for it) or take out one male.
Aside from that, provide for hiding spaces in the form of large bunches of plants, These will also provide shelter for any possible eggs and fry.

Enjoy your arulius, they are very pretty fish!

By the way, what used to be b. arulius, is now barbus tambraparniei; the scientists have mixed up these two for so long, they actually changed names over time. They recently turned things back to "the right way".
So your arulius are actually tambraparniei. Real arulius barbs are very rare