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Hey all;

I made a (very) stupid mistake about 14 months ago - I bought some fish without knowing what they were. They were labled 'China Barbs', and looked reasonably similar to Cuming's Barb (Barbus cumingi), although with more splotches. Now, however, they have grown and half of them have changed colour dramatically. The larger ones (now at about 7cm) have kept the original colours while the smaller ones (now at about 5cm) now have barely visible black splotches and have irridecent green and red undersides. They appear to only attain a small size, as they were bought at around 3.5cm. Any takers?

Thanks for any help recived,
Tarky

China Barbs are b. semifasciolatus.
A species that can grow quite large (up to 9 cm) but is fairly docile for a barb.
There is also a gold variety, called "Shubert's barb" (b. shuberti).
The spots are unique for each individual fish and the drawing will differ as they grow.

The "green" (original, wild) variety is very pretty, if kept in a shaded tank with lots of vegetation.

tinfoil;

Thanks for that! I'll have a bit of a search around the net, see if I can find some more info.

Thanks,
Tarky

Ah. The gold version of this is the familiar "Gold Barb", which I can vouch makes a VERY good aquarium fish (beautiful, tough, and -- unlike some Barbs -- totally peaceful, even with smaller fish). As with two other very popular Cyprinid breeds -- the Leopard Danio and the Odessa Barb -- its real origin is shrouded in mystery, since Schubert swore it was a wild species but no one else has ever managed to find a single one. The feeling is that he bred them himself, in which case he should have taken credit -- they're a lovely fish. If the original version of B. semifasciolatus is comparably tough and peaceful, you should have absolutely no trouble keeping them.

Time to dig out the venerable Innes Book again!

On page 198, Innes covers Barbus semifasciolatus. He describes it as follows:

In our own lives we often find ourselves agreeably attached, not so much to persons of brilliance, as to those having good dispositions: those that endure much and ask little. So it is with B. semfasciolatus, a fish without any striking beauty that has for many years maintained a degree of popularity among aquarists.

The half-dozen partly broken bands give the fish its outward identity. These cross a green-golden lateral line and a field of large, iridescent scales. The fins are tinted yellow. At mating time the belly of the male is moderately flushed with red. Barbels (2) very small.

Barbus fasciolatus is a very similar species from West Africa, having about twice as many bars and exactly twice as many barbels, one pair of which is large. We have never seen that fish and can therefore offer no illustration. Sometimes dealers believe that they have B. fasciolatus, but so far as this writer is concerned they have turned out to be B. semifasciolatus that happen to have a few extra bars.

The Half Banded Barb is a native of Southern China, grows to a little over 6 cm in length, and has much to recommend it: tough, fairly long lived, peaceful disposition, reasonably easy to breed, fairly fecund when spawning, fry not too difficult to raise, and while the wild variety is a somewhat demure fish compared to the gold variety that is far more frequently seen in the trade, it has much to recommend it.

Photo of original form of the fish

Keep them in a group of 12 individuals or more in a planted aquarium, and they come into their own in a big way.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Yep, that photo is of them! I've currently got them in a group of 6 - although they seem to school with the Agazz's Glassfish I also have in the tank which bumps the number up to 9. The glassfish seem to have adapted themselves to act almost exactly like the barbs - its quite interesting that they can do that.

Anyways, thanks for all your help guys!