Collecting Tropical Fish in India by Vinod (Vinny) Kutty

Collecting Tropical Fish in India

By Vinny Kutty
Previously published in the Newsletter of the Tampa Bay Aquarium Society, Spring 1997
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Many of our readers enjoyed my article on collecting fish in Nigeria (West Africa). Although that trip will be hard to top, I had an opportunity to do the same in India a couple of months ago. I had not collected in India in about 10 years and it was one of my reasons in going back. I have relatives and a place to stay in India and that made collecting and traveling much easier. My father is a retired Aquaculturist with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. As a result, he has contacts in the fisheries departments in most countries. I remember once when a local fish farmer took my bucket of prized fish catch and came back after a few minutes, neatly bagged under oxygen...and then he announced that lunch was served at his house! It's nice to have personal contacts.

The region of India I visited was the state of Kerala. It is a sliver of coastal land in southwestern India, half the size of Florida, with 300 miles of warm sandy beaches, rivers, lagoons, hills and mountains covered with dense, lush forests. Kerala and most of India's west coast gets battered by the monsoon rains from June thru August and during that time, they get about 60 inches of rain (Tampa gets about 45 inches in a year and Los Angeles about 15). December and January are very comfortable months; May and September are hotter than our July. Like Florida, Kerala is very verdant, with an incredible variety of plants. If you are an orchid enthusiast, the Vanda sp. will make you drool. Due to the rain and the soil type, the waters in Kerala are mostly soft and slightly acidic. pH readings were around 6.6 to 6.8 in most places and occasionally reached 7. Coastal lagoons and brackish water areas near Cochin typically have a higher, more alkaline pH (8.0 - 8.2).

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Since I didn't go to India with an exclusive goal of fish collection, I was able to spend only about 5 days concentrating on fish. I spent the rest of the time with family members, bird watching and wandering into wildlife refuges looking for non-aquatic larger animals, that's another article for another newsletter. Here, I'll stay with fishy subjects.

What kinds of fishes do you have in India? Well, India is Carp country. By Carps, I mean fishes like Barbs, Danios and Rasboras, Flying Foxes, Bala Sharks etc. India is also the easternmost distribution of the cichlid family. Cichlids are firmly entrenched in tropical America and Africa but they lost the battle for global colonization to carps in Asia. Three species of cichlids of the genus Etroplus (Chromides) hang on to their niches in India. There is a species of cichlid in Iran (Iranocichla hormuensis) and a few Tilapia sp. in Israel and Egypt. So, there are only a handful outside the Americas, Africa and Madagascar.

Why are cichlids so outcompeted by your average carps such as Barbs, Danios and Rasboras? Well, that is a complex question and may have something to do with cichlids being secondary division fishes, meaning they originated in the oceans and then learned to colonize the freshwaters with the passage of time. They may have found, upon arrival, all niches taken in the freshwaters of Asia by the carps mentioned above, not to mention catfish and anabantids (mostly Gouramis). This is just theory but there are probably many other reasons.

The niches filled by livebearers, plecos and tetras in the Americas are filled by small carps in Asia. It is unfortunate that these small carps are not very popular in the hobby. Most of them are small and would make excellent community tank residents. In aquarium literature, Barbs are often placed under the genera Puntius, Barbus and Capoeta and the one that I saw most often was P.filamentosus and as its name implies, its dorsal fin had incredibly long and beautiful extensions; it is also a very colorful fish. My first collecting effort took place unexpectedly when I was on my way to do some landscape photography in the hillsides and I ran into a cool, clear stream with large, round granite rocks and sandy bottom. This place was a treasure. There were tons of small schooling fish to be seen. They all looked the same until I rolled my pants up and started catching some fish with a towel. The variety! My prize included a small anabantid Anabas testudineus (Climbing Perch), lot of Rasbora daniconius small Mastacembelus sp. (Fire eel-type), Garra sp. and a bunch of Giant Danios (Danio malabaricus). The Climbing Perch as its name implies, can climb out of water and wander to other pools if its pool dries out. It is a tough little critter and handles stress very well. The Rasbora daniconius were only 2 inches long, very colorful and unjustifiably absent from our hobby. Garra sp. are barbs trying to make like Plecostomus. They are similar to Chinese Algae Eaters and can hang on to rock and wood with their sucker mouths and eat algae for a living.

The water in this stream was cool (75 F) and the pH was about 6.5. I did not measure the oxygen content but most streams in Kerala are only a few miles from a water fall and water falls are nature's air pumps. Let this be a clue for increased aeration in your tanks if you are trying to breed some rare fish. Did you know that fish grow faster in water with higher oxygen content? I hope you're not thinking that I'm contradicting myself by advocating increased aeration after giving a talk on planted aquaria (October 14, 1997 at the Tampa Bay Aquarium Society) where I suggested decreasing aeration to conserve carbon dioxide for the plants. My logic behind it is: photosynthesizing plants produce all the oxygen needed by fish during the day, so in planted tanks with good lighting and low fish population, additional aeration is not usually necessary, except at night time when the fish AND the plants are sucking up oxygen from the water. In densely planted tanks, oxygen gets quite low by early morning after hours of oxygen consumption by both fish and plants. If you see your fish gasping for air at the surface early in the morning, you might want to get an air pump hooked up with a timer so that the tank gets aeration automatically between say...midnight and 6 a.m., when the lights are off. This way, by the time the tank lights go on at say...10 a.m., there is enough carbon dioxide built up for the plants.

But I digress...My dad happened to be in the car when we stumbled onto this little stream. He helped me identify a few fish and we finally got the fish in buckets and got them to my grandmother's house. My 80-year old grandmother, who seems to be getting smaller, cuter and wrinklier every time I see her, looked in the buckets and while our backs were turned, emptied the buckets in her garden, thinking it contained just dirty water. Thinking she'd done us a favor, she smilingly returned the cleaned and empty buckets to me. I'd traveled 12,000 miles to see this sweet old lady, so I simply couldn't get mad. So, back to the stream we went and caught most of the fish again.

The peace and serenity was enveloping. The misty mountain tops, lush green trees, rolling hills and the distant waving rice paddies...it was simply breath taking. Not the impression you had of India I bet.

One of my collecting goals in India was to bag a few Etroplus canarensis. Etroplus is the only cichlid genus endemic to India and the island of Sri Lanka. These are fairly primitive cichlids, often sold in pet stores as Chromides; they are related to cichlids of Madagascar. Their appearance and behavior are remarkably similar to the Paretroplus sp. from Madagascar. The Orange Chromide (Etroplus maculatus) and the larger Green Chromide (Etroplus suratensis) are available in the hobby, the former is readily available and makes a colorful and easily spawned addition to the large community tank. The third species, Etroplus canarensis, was described well over 100 years ago but has a very limited range (it is found only in one little river system in a remote corner of the country) and was thought to be synonymous to the Green Chromide. Not so. The third species is distinct and exists. This fish was exported for the first time out of India in 1999 and some of these specimens are under the husbandry of Jeff Rapps of New Jersey. It is said to grow to about 5 inches, with yellowish coloring and vertical bars on the body. I got a copy of the original description of this fish from an old fisheries library in the city of Palghat and got more information about it. I had also contacted Dr. Melanie Stiassny of the American Museum of Natural History in New York about its last known collection locality. Armed with all the information, I talked to local fish types and got blank stares every time. Nobody had seen or heard of this fish. Not even the scientific community. It isn't big or common enough to be considered a food fish and so, the fisheries people had no interest in it. The hobbyists were of no help because the aquarium hobby in India is not very developed and even if it were, they'd only be interested in exotic species. We should know all about that...considering Florida has many beautiful native fish that we seem to ignore. So, I looked for it in most large bodies of water and in streams and I talked to a lot of fishermen, all to no avail. I was near its range but not exactly in it. So, I suspect the fish has an even smaller range than previously thought...or my collecting skills need work. Due to time and scheduling conflicts, I couldn't find the fish. I was disappointed but maybe because some of the scientific and hobbyists around there know about it, they may make an effort to catch the fish. Or maybe during my next trip.

The other two Chromides are excellent aquarium residents. Orange Chromide (aka Red Chromide), an aquarium color variant of the original is one of the most desirable cichlids you could keep. They are colorful, small (3 inches max.), fairly peaceful (I keep them with tetras and curviceps), hardy, eat anything, not shy, easily bred, cheap and easily available. I will never know why they're not the most popular cichlids. I've maintained a wild color morph of this species for the last 10 years and I never tire of it. The pair I have make babies on a regular basis. I once raised a brood to commercial size and distributed it around but nowadays, I just let the other fish eat the fry.

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The Green Chromide is a larger, herbivorous cichlid, that gets about as big as a Severum. Like Severums, it requires a lot of vegetable matter in its diet. I used to feed it leaves of Romaine lettuce, spinach, frozen peas, zucchini and some cichlid pellets. This fish is also happier at a water temperature of about 80 F. In the aquarium literature, you will often read that this fish should be kept in brackish water and that it requires high temperatures like Discus (85-88 F) but these conditions seem a bit rigid after having seen them in the wild. This fish is most often seen in warm coastal lagoons, where it grows to about 14 inches but I also saw it in soft water with a pH of about 6.5, almost 100 miles from the Arabian Sea. The water was NOT brackish and the temperature was only about 77 F. Of course, in softer, cooler waters, this fish is not very abundant and it does not grow to sizes larger than 6 inches. The largest specimen I measured was a little smaller than 7 inches.

The Green Chromide was a pain in the neck to catch. I'd been trying for almost an hour with little luck. The water was slightly muddy and the local fish eagle was having more luck. Then, a local fisherman walked up to me and asked me to watch, as he picked up a coconut frond that was lying on the ground nearby, walked into the lake and started dragging the frond across the bottom of the lake. He then paused, watched for rising bubbles, reached down to the source of the bubbles and came back up with a Green Chromide in his palm and a smile on his face. I was amazed. Apparently, this fish has a habit of diving into the mud when threatened, a behavior difficult to emulate in the confines of an aquarium. The bubbles emitted from the mud can usually be traced back to the fish. It is called "karimeen" by the locals and is supposed to be quite tasty. I pass. The Orange and Green Chromide are often found together. The smaller Orange Chromide is reputed to help clean parasites off the larger Green and in return for the favor, the Orange sometimes eat the fry of the Greens. I kept these two species together in an aquarium for 2 years and I did not see any such behavior. When my Greens spawned, they were quite aggressive about chasing away the Orange. During non-breeding times, however, both species are quite peaceful, other than the usual hierarchy-related chases and nips. Of course, there were Tilapia every where. Tilapia have not been a tremendous threat to the native fishes as they were once believed to be.

Among the other fishes that I found was a truly vicious-looking Goby (Glossigobius gerius) - an adult fish gets to the size of a human arm and you can easily insert your fist into its mouth. It is one of those creatures that is capable of instilling fear by its appearance alone. It is one of the chief predators of both Chromides. Among other predators of Chromides are about half dozen species of Snakeheads (Channa sp.) but unfortunately, an unknown disease that is reputed to have spread from South East Asia has almost completely wiped out this genus in India. Only a few genera seem to be susceptible but those that are, are obliterated. Scientists suspect that the vector may be a virus but it has not been confirmed. As a result, I was not able to see any Snakeheads.

Snakeheads were fairly common in Thailand around 1990, when I visited that country. So I assume this affliction is fairly recent. They are desired food fish in their natural habitat and their recent absence probably has affected the diets of many. I have tasted them and recall meat to be buttery and free of annoying bones. These are generally very large (3 feet) fish with cryptic coloration but there is a pleasant exception, namely Channa gachua (or Channa orientalis as it is occasionally known.) This species is very colorful, with a lot of green, blue and red markings and here is the best part: it gets to about 6 inches max. and has been spawned in aquaria by some Germans. This very attractive, easily cared for fish has always been fascinating to me and I was really hoping to find a few during my trip but all I can hope is that there are enough of them to get introduced to the American fish hobby soon. Keepers of all cichlids would really enjoy this species.

Also from a Chromide perspective, I saw a few very large catfish of the genus Ompok (Ompok bimaculatus) and a giant Wallago attu that was almost 4 feet long. These three groups of fish are the primary predators of Chromides in India. Speaking of catfish, I was about to grab a Mystus sp. when a person watching me warned me not to go near the pectoral or dorsal fins - they were supposed to be able to inject venom into your body. It was supposed to cause severe pain for a few hours but not much more. I heeded the advise and stayed away.

So, that is a summary of my collecting experience in Southwestern India. I did not bring back any fish because of extended layovers, pain-in-the-rear exporting permits, pain-in-the-rear quarantine procedures etc. Although, if I'd caught Etroplus canarensis, I would have certainly brought it back! The aquarium hobby in India is still budding. New species and equipment seem to be everywhere. The nation as a whole has been undergoing dramatic economic changes for the last 10 years or so, and as a result, there has been a huge migration of of the population from poverty and low-income status to the middle class. There are millions of people who are now able to enjoy non-essential activities that are beyond just the sake of survival. This transition is not necessarily positive - I believe that the worst environmental offenders are those who have just discovered their newly developed financial prowess. It is beyond the capacity of the poor to pollute the environment since they do not possess anything of a polluting nature; the educated and wealthy on the other hand are more often aware of the damage of environmental pollution.

The nouveau riche seem, at least in India, willing and able to banish the cause of environmentalism and create consumer waste, dispose toxic chemicals etc. without much guilt. Many have fancy new cars now and automobile emissions are not enforced at all. Leaded fuels and diesel are choking the cities of India. So, the blooming aquarium hobby is mixed with the drawbacks of an increasingly industrializing society. For me, the hobby is a vestige of my love of nature, therefore, environmentalism and aquarium keeping go hand in hand. Most of the fish I saw in pet stores were imported from Southeast Asian countries like Singapore and Thailand. There are a few tropical fish farms in India but it too is not very developed. I was able to visit a small goldfish and gourami farm but after having seen the fancy farms in Florida, it was hard to impress me. Overall, it was a wonderful trip and I hope to do it again sometime.

Editor's note: For more on collecting fish in India see: Etroplus canarensis - The Search for the Rarest Indian Cichlid, by Ravi Chandran