The swamp barb or chola barb (''Puntius chola'') is a

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

freshwater

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...

belonging to the subfamily Cyprininae of the family Cyprinidae. It originates in inland waters in

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, and is found in

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Nepal Nepal (; ne, :ne:नेपाल, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in S ...

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

, Sri Lanka,

Bhutan Bhutan (; dz, འབྲུག་ཡུལ་, Druk Yul ), officially the Kingdom of Bhutan,), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is situated in the Eastern Himalayas, between China in the north and India in the south. A mountainou ...

, and

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. '' Puntius brevis'' is also sometimes known as swamp barb.

Common name

The common name is swamp barb. It is also known as Puthi in Assamese and Bengali.

Description

The fish will grow in length up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) and weigh up to 60 grams (2.1 ounces).

Habitat

It natively inhabits streams,

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of w ...

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flo ...

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in severa ...

marsh A marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous rather than woody plant species.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p Marshes can often be found a ...

es, swamps,

pond A pond is an area filled with water, either natural or artificial, that is smaller than a lake. Defining them to be less than in area, less than deep, and with less than 30% emergent vegetation helps in distinguishing their ecology from ...

s, and inundated fields, mainly in shallow water. They live in a

climate in water with a 6.0 - 6.5 pH, a water hardness of 8 - 15 dGH, and a temperature range of . It feeds on

worm Worms are many different distantly related bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limbs, and no eyes (though not always). Worms vary in size from microscopic to over in length for marine polychaete wo ...

s, benthic

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group can ...

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three ...

s, and

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...

matter.

Importance to humans

The swamp barb is of commercial importance in the aquarium trade the fisheries industry and very good live feed for

Arowana Arowanas are freshwater bony fish of the subfamily Osteoglossinae, also known as bony tongues (the latter name is now often reserved for Arapaiminae). In this family of fish, the head is bony and the elongated body is covered by large, heavy sc ...

and for live Predator aquarium fishes.

Breeding

The swamp barb is an open water, substrate egg-scatterer, and adults do not guard the eggs. During breeding time, the males display very prominent red bands, which lasts for around two days (rivaling Rosy Barbs - P conchonius), while females display red stripes which last around 5 hours. See: http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/apr102008/922.pdf for colour photos of P chola in courtship.

Name origins

The swamp barb was originally named ''Cyprinus chola'' by Dr. Francis Buchanan-Hamilton in 1822, and has also been referred to in scientific literature as ''Puntius titius'', ''Barbus chola'', ''Capoeta chola'', or ''Barbus titius''. In Bengali:পুঁটি

References

* Puntius Fish described in 1822 Taxa named by Francis Buchanan-Hamilton Barbs (fish) {{puntius-stub