So Sad - Puntius Denisonii - Red Line Torpedo Barb

[Fishalicious]

Scientists have highlighted the threatened conservation status of the Red lined torpedo barb, Puntius denisonii, a popular aquarium fish.

Prasad, Ali and Raghavan summarised the current knowledge on Puntius denisonii in the latest issue of the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes, as part of the journal's regular Threatened Fishes of the World series.

Their paper claims that Puntius denisonii is officially regarded as "Endangered", and that the aquarium trade is responsible for the demise of the fish.

Population decline
Raghavan, who wrote a paper on the "boom and bust fishery" of South India's Western Ghats region, said that the species has a highly fragmented distribution and is restricted to certain parts of the Chalakudy, Kallar, Periyar, Achencoil, Pamba, Valapatanam, Chaliyar, Chandragiri and Bharatapuzha rivers of Kerala.

A study undertaken by Gopi in 2000, which examined the freshwater fishes of Kerala State, found that Puntius denisonii was "rare". A 2006 study by Kurup and Radhakrishnan recorded the species as "very rare".

In 2004, a study by Sudhi claimed that the population was dwindling at an annual rate of 70%.



Really sad news guys!!! The prices are going to rocket and they are already expensive fish! They are also extremely difficult to breed in the home aquarium so there is not a lot of hope... the Asians will probably jump in and come up with some freaky method to mass breed per usual.

[NickFish]

On one hand, I'm glad I got ny school of a dozen before the prices tripled.

On the other hand, this is very, very bad. Obviously will we have to make some cut backs, and if we're really lucky they'll find a way to better captive breed these guys.

[William]

There are allready Asian breeding farms that mass produce these. The problem is that they have a hard time seeling their fish because people don´t know about this so there is only a demand for wild caught fish. This,howevr ufortunate, may help solve this and hopefully even higher prices on wild caught specimens can increase the demand for pond bred fish.

I guess that farms might need to get themsselves a publicist.