Hi all.

I'm new to the forums here, and to tropical fishkeeping in general.

Seems like a friendly and helpful place, so I wonder if any of you folks could help identify my fish!

They were sold to me as 'Rainbow Barbs'. I went to buy Cherry Barbs, but when I spotted these in the tank alongside, I instantly fell in love with them. The shop also had a tank of Rosy Barbs, which looked quite different to the fish I ended up with.

So anyway, I got home and hit the search engines to find some more info on my purchase. Nothing. Absolutely nothing came up for 'Rainbow Barb'

I've tried all the tricks I can think of to turn something up, but I'm stuck. I asked the shop if they had the full Latin name but they just stared blankly at me.

The six fish I have all vary in colour. Fins were quite small at first, but have grown (within a month or two) to become large and 'flouncy'. One fish is bright red and slightly larger. One or two of the others are slightly red/pink and the rest are subtly coloured.

All have an amazing oily/rainbow appearance when viewed from certain angles. Really very pretty. Large black spot at the rear of the flank (red fish has two, one feint) and one behind the gill cover (feint on all the fish). All fins are clear/slightly pink except the very red one and one of the other slightly red fish, which both have a few black specks on their dorsal fins.

They normally take flake off the surface, are very active but not at all aggressive in a tank with sliver tips and SAEs. They have silver bellies and are quite drab/brown when viewed from above.

Apologies for the quality of the pictures. My photography skills are worse than my fish identification skills!

Thanks for any help you can give me.

XVF

OK, can't find anywhere to upload photos to the forum, so will upload them elsewhere and post links











This post has been edited by xvf: May 20 2008, 11:39 AM

Could be a rosy barb?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosy_Barb

they do look like rosy barbs but i suspect they are actually a hybrid or something like that, the fin's look unusually long and the colour is paler than a usual ruby.

i would guess a selective bred hybrid of rosy and lemon barbs to get long fins or something along those lines.

Whilst looking around I found reference to "Long finned rosy barb" on some shop websites. Perhaps one of these? The double spot on the tail is a bit off for rosy's though isn't it?

This post has been edited by DevUK: May 20 2008, 12:30 PM

won't pretend to be a barb expert

it's the difference between the fish which leads me to believe they are a hybrid as much as anything else. obviously with 'natural' species you get ones with different markings but they're all usually pretty similar. with hybrids you tend to get much more variation from one fish to another.

Thanks for your input everyone

They are definitely closer to a long-finned Rosy than anything else I've come across in my search - but the colouring really is something to be seen. The photo's don't really show how beautiful they are - literally rainbow coloured!

I'm beginning to think that they are a hybrid of some sort. They look significantly different to the Rosy Barbs in the tank nearby them in the shop.

In terms of care etc. I guess I'm fairly safe treating them in a similar way to a Rosy?

yes, that's what I'd do.

would love to see some better pics if you ever manage to capture they're colouring on film.

OK. Thanks for your help!

If I get a better camera, I'll happily upload some proper shots of these fish

In the first pic they look very much like Cumings Barbs, very similar to the Rosy Barb

http://aquavisie.retry.org/Database/Aquari...us_cumingi.html

This post has been edited by andywatson29: May 20 2008, 03:06 PM

Might want to look up odessa barbs

They dont have the orange stripe on the body, which ordessa have

Some pics I've found of Odessa Barbs look quite similar, but the stripe thing is definitely not evident on my fish.

The section on Rosy Barbs on this page:

_http://aqualandpetsplus.com/Minnows,%20Barbs.htm

tends to indicate that there are many variants, and the picture is similar again.

It's really hard for me to tell by looking at just one or two pictures, but the Cumings look too gold, and with a very pronounced black spot/line behind the gills. My pics above don't really show it very well, but the dominant colour in my fish is pale pink. I wish I could get a better shot, but the last picture is probably most representative of the average colouration.

Cumings (Puntius cumingii) also seem to be known as Two-Spot, while mine are sort of one-and-a-half spot!

I'll do some more searching on your suggestions tomorrow. This is all very good fun, thanks for your ideas everyone!