Breeding Project: Cherry Barb

They are growing very well as of late. They are beginning to develop a stockier body, growing girth and slowly resembling miniatures of the adults. One more step closer to their developmentation is the coloration. Almost all of them are now well on their well to looking like juveniles - being in a beautiful brass-orange coloration with as irridescence of orange. Day by day, their body morphology changes slightly to resemble more of the adult body shape.

Now, in certain lighting, the brass-orange coloration is very strong, along with the stripe that is noticeable reagardless of angle. One thing that I have noticed consistantly since they have become fry is that they have quite the large mouths for the small size they come in. At most, they seem to be able to open their mouths as wide as their eyes are, which is actually pretty large if you ever get a chance to see the body proportions. My guess is, the eye developmentation for such a size possibly speculates that this species is a strictly diurnal fish. Of course, majority of fish species are diurnal, but this only furthers that theory.

I think it is at this stage in time, that the term 'juvenile' can be appropriately coined upon them. Although they still do look like fry, I'm not quite sure at what age range and stage is a good enough indicator to demonstrate that it is right to call them by their third stage. Of course, after assuming that they take on adult morphologies officially places them in the juvenile category, it is only a guess. The young (on majority), are also officially one month old this day. This is a good track, as by the second month they should resemble very much like the adults by then! Hopefully they'll be too big to be consumed at that time and will be able to be place amongst the adults.