Despite being a wholly unsuitable aquarium subject, C. idella is often traded as such, with an albino form having been developed specifically for the ornamental market.

Individuals which have outgrown their aquarium or pond should never be released into natural waters, either, since this species has proven capable of causing serious environmental damage under a wide range of climatic conditions.

This species appears to be restricted to the Imo and Niger drainages in Nigeria but the full extent of its distribution is unclear.

Type locality is ‘Aba, Lower Niger, Nigeria’, corresponding to the city of Aba in Abia state, southern Nigeria which lies on the Aba River, a tributary of the Imo.

Nigeria has lost 95 % of its original rainforest cover, num…

Type locality is close to a waterfall on the Ndian River in southwestern Cameroon, and appears restricted to the coastal plains either side of the border between Cameroon and Nigeria, including the Korup and Cross River National Parks.

This species is widely-distributed in lowland, coastal regions of Togo, Benin and Nigeria as far as the Cross River delta, and occurs at some inland localities along the lower Niger River. Populations in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon are now considered to represent other species.

This species’ currently accepted range stretches from eastern Nigeria (Mbam River) across central Cameroon (via the Sanaga River system of which the Mbam is a tributary) and across the border into Central African Republic (upper Mambéré basin).

It was described from ‘Jade Plateau, Cameroon’, this apparently corresponding to the Lebo River which lies in what is now the Central African Republic and presumably forms part of the Mambéré headwaters.

Described from Assinie-Mafia in south-eastern Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), western Africa but currently accepted to be extensively distributed in coastal river drainages of central western Africa from the Saint John River, central Liberia to the Cross River drainage, in southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon. It also occurs in the Niger and its major tributary the Benue (Bénoué) and has thus been recorded from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Togo.

This species is still very rare in the hobby although it has built up something of a following among enthusiasts of planted 'nano' aquaria and you may see it on sale under the trade names of 'dwarf amber/ember barb'. Its small adult size evolved via a process known as miniaturisation characterised by sexually mature adults with a significantly reduced size of less than 20mm SL. Among bony fishes cyprinids are one of the few groups in which this phenomenon occurs repeated…

The genus Barbus is in something of a confused state classification-wise. While there exist almost 340 putative species the vast majority of them do not appear to be closely-related to the genus Barbus sensu stricto.

Berrebi et al. (1996) proposed that only the European, Southwest Asian and North African representatives should be included in Barbus (around 20 species) and that ‘all species of Barbus sen…

This species is also known as ‘Gardner’s Killi’ and ‘blue lyretail’ and the commonly-available aquarium forms are perhaps among the best choices for those new to keeping killifishes being relatively hardy, colourful and easy to breed.

A number of ornamental strains have also been line-bred by aquarists including ‘gold’ and ‘albino’.