World Of Guppies Forum

Duck and Dive · Site Admin Joined: 05 May 2008 Posts: 59

Cherry Barb - Puntius titteya
Origen: Sri Lanka

Size: Can grow up to 4cm but generaly smaller

pH: 6-7.5 prefer slightly acidic water

Temp range: Sub-tropical 16-26 ( degrees C )

Diet: Will eat a wide range of food. Good quaility flake or staple food is recomended. As well as frozen or live food such as brine shrimp or bloodworm. Vegetable matter is adviseable.

Compatibility: Suitable for most community aquariums, best kept in shoals of 4 or ,ore. Best kept when 50% are female and 50% male to cut down on nipping between males. A peaceful member to the community aquarium and can also be very energetic at feeding time.

Tank position: Shoals in the middle to upper reaches of your tank. Or wherever the food is!

Sexing: Males are red colour and females tend to be an orangey yellow colour.

Breeding: There are two ways to breed cherry barbs, here is the first:

1.) Cherry barbs are pretty easy to breed as they are egg scatterers. All you need to do is a partial water change but the water you should put in should be 6oC colder than their normal water. This then triggers the barbs to breed so put a few spawning mops in the tank. Then remove the eggs into a rearing box or a rearing tank

Here is the second:

2.) Move a female and a male cherry barb into a breeding tank when the males turn to a deeper red colour when they are ready to spawn. Place a griddle at the bottom so the eggs fall through the griddle so the eggs do not get eaten. Put the male and female back into the main tank once they have spawned and remove the griddle. The eggs should hatch in between 24-48 hrs, you may find that most of the eggs wont hatch but thats not a problem you will just have to make do with however many you have!

Rearing the fry: Rearing the fry is the same as most eggaying species.Here is a rough guide of how to raise the eggs:

1.) Soon after the fry have hatched you should feed them freshly hatched artemia or liquifry No.1.

2.) After a week or so you should then start weaning them on to liquifry no.2 as well as newly hatched artemia.

3.) At about 2-3 weeks old they should start being fed very finely crushed flake or hikari first bites or liquifry No.3.

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