Tear-spot barb need info.

Phillip J

Hi I have had 2 tear spot barbs in my 75 gallon planted tank for a while now. I have found almost 0 info on these fish except them being sold for 40$ which is what my local fish store wanted until the fish had been there untouched for a month. So they dropped the price down to 15$ ,and despite them looking rather plain I got them. It was one of those times were I just had to have this fish even though I did't have any idea why.

So what I want to know is if these fish are rarely sold ,and if so is there some reason? I am really loving these two although one is growing faster ,and is a good bit prettier. I asume male he is 3.5 inches long at this point with irredesent green scales on his top half(the other one has this aswell),red on the edges on all his fins,and black on his fins aswell. His top fin is larger than the other one with some nice looking black spines on it. The drabber one has red ,and all to its just well......drabber with a smaller dorsal fin. Here is a pic of what the nicer one looks like Puntius rohani tear spot barb image by cichlidexchange on Photobucket Mine has a little more red on its tail though. I will try to get my own pic up tommor maybe.

Anyway some info would be nice mainly: How big do they get? Is there a gender defrence? Is this fish rare if so I will start documenting what I have experienced with them.

Oh I have them with live plants ,and they are plant safe it seems.

Byron

Data on this species, Puntius rohani, will likely be scarce for some time, since it is a fairly new discovery and its only known habitat (as far as is known) appears to be in a wildlife reserve.

During their review of the filamentosus group of barbs in Puntius, Pethiyagoda & Kottelat (2005) identified this fish as a colour variety of P. filamentosus and suggested it might well be a distinct species. It has now been described as such by Devi, Indra & Knight (2010). Here is a link to their scientific paper which has some nice photos and a map of the known habitat:
http://threatenedtaxa.org/ZooPrintJo...01121-1129.pdf

To make matters worse, this species is threatened in the wild, so responsible collection will be severely curtailed. Sadly, a great number of fish species in India are threatened or close to extinction due to severe habitat destruction and almost no regulatory measures.

Here is the link to the entry in Fishbase, though there is little information:
Puntius rohani

Byron.

Phillip J

Thanks so much! I am trying to take a pic ,but they are very fast :O.


What should I do with them? Give them to a breeder since the species is endangered? Try to breed them myself? I have a male ,and female if that article is correct. Maybe I shoulden't concern myself with it ,and just keep them as normal fish like I have been doing.

Anyway how big do they get? I have looked over the article ,and it is a little above me (so many numbers!). Still cool though I am glad you shared it!

Oh here are some bad pics. Some of my new plants that haven't rooted are floeting.

Edit: Never mind I have no idea how to get a pic in here sorry.

Byron

The Fishbase link I posted gives the length as 9.5 cm (= almost 4 inches) for the male.

It is sometimes tricky to keep up with scientific advances. I just realized that this fish has gone through a name change already. It is no longer in the genus Puntius but is now known as Dawkinsia rohani. A revision of the Indian sub-continent species in the "former" Puntius was done this year (published this year anyway), I actually posted about this a couple months back but had forgotten.
My earlier post with the link is here:
Revision of Barb genus Puntius
And i see my biologist friend Matt Ford in Spain/UK has written a synopsis of this revision, here:
South Asian barbs – a guide to nomenclature — Seriously Fish

As for posting photos: in the "Additional Options" area below the text box of new posts there is a button "Manage Attachments." Click that, then click "Browse" when the new window opens, and find the photo on your PC. Double click the file, then "Upload" and it will if it is a jpg file.

Byron.

Olympia

I think it would be SOO cool to breed them!

Data is sparse.. you want to set up something natural with just them. Temperature info, and other breeding info I'd steal from a closely related barb from a similar regions to get started. Sure there's something about it.