other say they are naturaly found near Odesa.
I have also heard this, but Odessa is in Ukraine, and although it has a reasonably mild climate, can no way be considered tropical, yet the fish are plainly so, in cooler water there activity drops markedly and at temperate levels, they just hang listlessly.
I believe them to be a sport of Barbus ticto, an Indian fish. I don't know whether they are a natural or man made sport however.
The Barbus/Puntius saga is a real farce. The original motivation was the large size of the Barbus genus. It was said to be to large to manage, so a rather arbitary decision was made to split Barbus into Barbodes, Capoeta and Puntius based on whether they had 0, 1 or 2 pairs of barbels.
The re-classification began, and many fish were formally reclassified. It then transpired that fish that were actually very closely related, were being assigned to different genera, and some more reclassification was done. It then transpired that some species said to have just one pair of barbels, when microscopically examined, had in fact, two, so more work was redone.
In the end, the work stopped altogether and now we have a total mess with some authorities not recognising the new genera at all, others swearing by them, many species not dealt with yet, some that were done, that have been undone, and most people just dazed and confused.
The bottom line is if you need info on a barb, it it well worth searching for Barbus xxx, AND Puntius xxx AND Capoeta xxx AND Barbodes xxx although Capoeta and Barbodes are not used as much.
I tend to call them Barbus.