Taxonomy & naming
Barbatula conilobus was formally described by Alexander Prokofiev in 2016, in the same paper that described its close relative B. dsapchynensis, both drawn from the Zavkhan River basin of western Mongolia. It belongs to the family Nemacheilidae, the stone or brook loaches — by far the largest loach family, encompassing hundreds of small, mostly cryptic species spread across Eurasia's cool running waters. The genus Barbatula itself has a long and tangled taxonomic history: many of its species circulated for decades under the older names Nemacheilus or Noemacheilus before the family was split apart along genetic and morphological lines into the modern genera Barbatula, Orthrias, Oxynoemacheilus, Schistura, Triplophysa and others.
The species epithet conilobus derives from Latin conus (cone) and Greek lobos (lobe), referring to the small conical papillae or protrusions on the lobes of the lower lip — a fine anatomical character used to separate it from its sympatric congener B. dsapchynensis and other regional Barbatula. As with many recently described Central Asian nemacheilids, the Catalog of Fishes governs the current valid combination, and no synonymy or reclassification has since altered it.
Morphology
Barbatula conilobus is a small, elongate, cylindrical stone loach, built like its relatives for holding position on the bed of fast-flowing water rather than for open swimming. Detailed morphometric data for this specific species has not been widely published beyond the original description, but the genus as a whole is characterized by a slender body, a flattened head and belly, barbels around the mouth used to feel out food on the substrate, and small eyes set high on the head. Like other true loaches it carries a small erectile spine below the eye and has tiny, deeply embedded scales that leave the skin functionally naked — a feature that matters for husbandry (see In the aquarium) more than for identification in the field.
The diagnostic feature that gives the species its name is the cluster of small conical lobes on the lower lip, distinguishing it from B. dsapchynensis and other regional Barbatula with which it can otherwise be confused. Congeners such as the well-studied Eurasian stone loach B. barbatula typically reach roughly 4.5–6.5 in, and B. conilobus is presumed to fall in a broadly similar small-loach size range, though a specific maximum length has not been confirmed in available sources.
Habitat
This species is endemic to the Zavkhan River basin, part of the Great Lakes Depression (Valley of the Lakes) in western Mongolia — an internally drained, endorheic system with no outlet to the ocean, fed by snowmelt and rainfall off the surrounding mountains and terminating in the region's shallow steppe lakes. It is reported to be widely distributed throughout the Zavkhan basin and lives in sympatry with B. dsapchynensis in the same river system, a relict pairing tied to the region's history of climatic upheaval and drainage isolation going back to the Pliocene.
As a Central Asian stone loach from a high-altitude steppe drainage, B. conilobus almost certainly lives in cool, clear, flowing water rather than warm still water — the Zavkhan basin sits on the Mongolian plateau, where rivers run cold much of the year and habitat is defined by current, gravel or sand substrate, and strong seasonal temperature swings. No aquarium-specific water chemistry data has been published for this species, so specific pH and hardness figures below are conservative estimates for a cool running-water Central Asian nemacheilid rather than measured data.
Feeding
No dedicated dietary study has been published for Barbatula conilobus, but as a typical stone loach it can be expected to forage as a benthic micro-predator, picking small aquatic invertebrates — insect larvae, worms and tiny crustaceans — off gravel and sand in fast, clear water, in the same manner as its well-studied relatives in the genus. This matches the general Nemacheilidae pattern across the family: bottom-oriented, opportunistic feeding on whatever small invertebrate life the current delivers or that can be rooted out from between stones using the sensory barbels around the mouth.
In a hypothetical aquarium setting this diet would translate to small live and frozen foods — bloodworm, brine shrimp, small blackworm — along with sinking foods that reach the substrate, since a fish built for grubbing along the bottom of moving water is unlikely to compete well for food at the surface or in open water.
Mating
No observations of courtship, spawning behaviour or sexual dimorphism have been published for this species. Stone and brook loaches in general show little to no reliable external sexual dimorphism outside the breeding season, and reproduction in the wild is generally tied to seasonal cues — rising flow, changing temperature and photoperiod — that trigger a scattering spawn over gravel in flowing water. There is no reason from anything in the available literature to expect B. conilobus to differ from this pattern, but it should be read as an inference from the family rather than a documented fact for this species.
Breeding
Barbatula conilobus has no aquarium-trade or captive-breeding history; it is not known to be kept or bred by hobbyists, and no spawning has been documented in any setting. Based on what is known for Nemacheilidae generally, the expected reproductive mode is an egg-scatterer over gravel or among stones in fast-flowing water, with no parental care — the female releasing adhesive or semi-adhesive eggs that settle into the substrate and are left to develop unguarded. This pattern is well documented across the stone-and-brook-loach family; it has simply never been confirmed for this particular species.
Given that B. conilobus is a narrow-range endemic from a remote Mongolian drainage with essentially no aquarium presence, honesty is the right posture here: this is a species that is, as far as published sources show, never bred in captivity, and the correct expectation for anyone encountering it is a wild population studied by ichthyologists rather than a fish available to keep.
In the aquarium
Barbatula conilobus is not established in the aquarium trade and there is no husbandry record to draw on — it should not be treated as an available fish to purchase or keep. Discussion here is necessarily inferential, drawn from the needs of the genus and family rather than direct experience with this species. Like other Barbatula and stone loaches, it would be expected to need cool, clean, fast-flowing, well-oxygenated water over a gravel or sand substrate, conditions that are difficult to replicate outside a purpose-built streamtank and a poor match for a typical warm tropical community aquarium.
If this or a closely related species were ever to appear in the hobby, the same cautions that apply across the loach group would hold: near-scaleless skin makes stone loaches sensitive to copper-based medications and full-strength treatments, so any dosing would need to be conservative, and a fish adapted to cold, oxygen-rich mountain-basin water would suffer in a warm, still tank. For now, this remains a scientifically documented species rather than a hobby fish.
Conservation
Barbatula conilobus has not been assessed on the IUCN Red List and is classified here as Not Evaluated. As a species described only in 2016 from a single river basin, with no subsequent population survey located in available sources, its conservation status is genuinely unknown rather than confirmed as secure.
As an endemic confined to the Zavkhan River basin within Mongolia's Great Lakes Depression, any pressures on that single endorheic drainage — water extraction, mining, grazing pressure, or the broader climatic stress facing Central Asia's internal-drainage basins — would bear directly on the entire known range of the species. There is no evidence in available sources of an aquarium-trade collection pressure on this species; the greater relevance of a fish like this is scientific, as one of the relict Barbatula lineages that trace the region's Pliocene-era drainage history, and as a host recorded for Gyrodactylus parasites in a broader study of Central Asian relict fishes.