Feeding Your Fish Tips: Give your fish a variety of tropical fish food and not just flakes. Read the nutritional information on the canister of food to see what vitamins and minerals your fish is getting. Flakes can be the primary diet for many fish because they are packed with the vitamins and minerals your fish needs. However, try to supplement their diet with other types of food every once in a while. You should see better colors and increased vitality by varying their diet.
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Adult fish are dark brownish olive on the back, becoming lighter on the sides to white on the ventral surface. It has a black, vertical blotch in the middle of its body, above the origin of its pelvic fin. It has a second black, vertical blotch above its anal fin, and a third black bar or blotch on the base of the caudal fin, though less well defined as the other two blotches. The fins are thin and transparent or transluscent. Adults possess more pronounced colors than the juvenile. The adult male differs from a closely related filament barb species found in Tambraparni River basin, Puntius tambraparniei, and lacks the filament-like extensions to the branched dorsal-fin rays which lend to the incorrect use of the common name, longfin barb (Puntius filamentosus). It reaches an adult size of 4.75 in. (12.0 cm).
All of the known material of P. arulius is from the upper reaches of the Kaveri River basin. The only recent collections have been at Kodagu. No specimens have been found at Srirangapatna, however, despite an extensive search conducted in March, 1996. Local fishermen failed to recognize photographs of the fish or the local name mentioned by Jerdon. Its native habitat is large streams, rivers, and lakes, with a pH of 6.0 – 6.5, dH of 10, and temperature 19°C to 25°C.
The conservation status of this species is currently unknown. However it was formerly listed in the 2000 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species as critically endangered.
[tubepress mode=’tag’, tagValue=’Arulius barb’]