Could a little red river dweller from Sri Lanka be the sweetest fruit you’ll ever keep?
WORDS: NATHAN HILL
I’VE OFTEN WONDERED if aquarium stores can sometimes create a false impression about how abundant fish are. Not deliberately, of course, and not by malicious intent. But by the sheer volume of fish they carry, the typical customer could go their whole life never knowing just how troubled some species are in the wild. The fish we see in stores are, by and large, the products of large farming and aquaculture operations, produced in their millions overseas and streamed to us as a ready supply. Alas, in many cases the wild counterparts may be living in dire straits. Some species we take for granted aren’t even found in the wild anymore.
In step cherry barbs. They’re a community staple and a familiar face to any regular aquarium store visitor. Chances are that you may have even kept some before. So, it may come as a surprise that these seemingly ubiquitous fish are classed as ‘vulnerable’ in the wild.
Endemic to southwestern Sri Lanka, they’re restricted to shrinking lowland rainforests, once vast and glorious but now broken up and divided across the land. After decades of British colonialism, civil war, and ever-encroaching industrialism had done its thing, some 95% of Sri Lanka’s tropical lowland rainforests had been destroyed. What remain for the cherry barbs are miniature oases, spread through the Kelani, Kalu, Gin and Nilwala basins.
As with so many troubled species, there’s a strong chance that there are more in the hobby than there are roaming free.
Meet the barb
The gorgeous cherry barbs. Unless you’re up to date with the latest taxonomic trends, you’re likely to know them by the scientific name of Puntius titteya. If you’ve got older books to hand, you might even find them as Barbus titteya, or Capoeta titteya. Alas, all of these are outdated, and a recent taxonomic revision now places them in a new genus of their own, as Rohanella titteya.
Across their range, there are notable variants. In the Kelani, Nilwala and Gin basins, there exists the ‘neon’ variant. The males of these fish show a distinct boundary between the dorsal (upper) edge and the flanks, the dorsal being brown with a yellow tint. Furthermore, they have an obvious horizontal line, starting at the tip of the snout, cleaving through the eyes, and running down until it nudges into the base of the caudal fin.
Meanwhile, you can also find the ‘ruby’ variants in the Nilwani and Gin basins. These fish have a dark red dorsal edge, wi
