:''This species may be confused with:''

golden barb :This species may be confused with either the gold barb'' (''Barbodes semifasciolatus'' var. ''schuberti'') ''or the goldfinned barb'' (''Puntius sachsii'').'' The golden barb or golden dwarf barb (''Pethia gelius'') is a species of cyprinid fis ...

'' (''P. gelius'').'' ''Barbodes semifasciolatus'',Kottelat, M. (2013)
The Fishes of the Inland Waters of Southeast Asia: A Catalogue and Core Bibliography of the Fishes Known to Occur in Freshwaters, Mangroves and Estuaries.
''The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, 2013, Supplement No. 27: 1–663.'' the Chinese barb, is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

cyprinid Cyprinidae is a family of freshwater fish commonly called the carp or minnow family. It includes the carps, the true minnows, and relatives like the barbs and barbels. Cyprinidae is the largest and most diverse fish family and the largest verte ...

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 li ...

native to the Red River basin in southeast Asia where they occur in fresh waters at depths of or less. The captive variant popularly known as the gold barb or Schuberti barb is an extremely popular

aquarium An aquarium (plural: ''aquariums'' or ''aquaria'') is a vivarium of any size having at least one transparent side in which aquatic plants or animals are kept and displayed. Fishkeepers use aquaria to keep fish, invertebrates, amphibians, aq ...

fish.

Description

Adults of this species have highly arched backs and a short pair of barbels on the upper jaw at the corners of the mouth. The back is light to reddish brown, the sides are metallic green or yellow-green, with a brassy or golden sheen below. The belly is whitish, and yellow-green in males at mating time. Females can be distinguished by their dull colors and their overall bulk. This species can reach a length of TL though most do not exceed SL.

Diet

Their diet consists of

invertebrates Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

(such as

insects 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 pairs of j ...

crustaceans 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 ...

and

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 wor ...

s) and plant matter.

Breeding

An egg-scatter, adult barbs will usually

spawn Spawn or spawning may refer to: * Spawn (biology), the eggs and sperm of aquatic animals Arts, entertainment, and media * Spawn (character), a fictional character in the comic series of the same name and in the associated franchise ** '' Spawn: Ar ...

around a hundred eggs, although up to 400 eggs have been observed from an exceptional female. This breeding occurs at the first light in the early morning.

In the aquarium

The popular gold strain ''P. semifasciolatus'' var. ''Schuberti'' (gold barb or Schuberti barb) was developed by hobbyist Thomas Schubert of

Camden, New Jersey Camden is a city in and the county seat of Camden County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Camden is part of the Delaware Valley metropolitan area and is located directly across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At the 2020 ...

in the 1960s through

selective breeding Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant mal ...

. For many years it was thought to be a distinct species but is in fact a selected sort of the indigenous (green) species which is rarely found in aquaria. The gold barb is an active, mildly aggressive schooling species that spends most of its time in the mid-level and bottom of the water. Its typical lifespan in captivity is around four to six years. This gold fish is often used in community tanks by fish keeping hobbyists. It breeds readily in outdoor pools and free-standing ponds during summer months, and withstands cooler temperatures better than other tropical fish. However, it does not stand the cold as well as its original plainer China barb counterparts.

Albino Albinism is the congenital absence of melanin in an animal or plant resulting in white hair, feathers, scales and skin and pink or blue eyes. Individuals with the condition are referred to as albino. Varied use and interpretation of the term ...

variants of the gold barbs have been produced by Dennis Wilcox in the 1970s in the US. Gold barbs with no black markings have been observed by Stanislav Frank in Europe also around that time. Flesh colour (pink) specimens appeared by the 1990s. Tri-colour, i.e., black, yellow, and pink specimens appeared recently. In an aquarium, the Gold Barb eats flake food readily, but benefits from the occasional feeding of live food such as mosquito larvae or daphnia.

Gallery

Image:Brokat.jpg Image:Gold Barb 700.jpg Image:Gold Barb Puntius semifasciolatus 4.png Image:Gold Barb Puntius semifasciolatus 2.png

References

* * * *

External links

Gold Barb Fact Sheet
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gold Barb Barbodes Barbs (fish) Fish described in 1868 Taxa named by Albert Günther