Supposedly native to the Greater Sunda Islands of Borneo and Sumatra as well as the Riau Archipelago and Bangka Island off the east coast of Sumatra but the only collection/locality details we have been able to find refer to Bornean populations. Numerous records also exist from the Indonesian provinces of West Kalimantan (Kalimantan Barat), Central Kalimantan (Kalimantan Tengah) and South Kalimantan (Kalimantan Selatan) but the species appears not to occur in the north of the island.
It exists in several colour forms depending on locality; fish from the south and east of Sarawak state in Malaysian Borneo are green/blue in colour while those found in the west are red/orange, for example. It would be useful if these variants were labelled with the collection details by hobbyists and scientists alike in order to preserve bloodlines and maintain greater accuracy although normally they are just labelled with the distinguishing colour eg. ‘red’, ‘green’ or ‘blue’.