Like Volume I, in which the catfishes were treated, Volume II on the Order Cyprini was both a compilation of all Bleeker's papers and a review of the then existing knowledge of the group. Bleeker’s Order Cyprini is now considered to be a combination of the two unrelated orders Cypriniformes and Cyprinodontiformes.
In the present volume Bleeker gives extensive descriptions of 130 species. It is clear from the headings of these descriptions that Bleeker did not only possess coloured drawings of all of the species, but also that he had them arranged on 53 plates ready for printing. (Probably cut out and pasted onto larger sheets similar to the plates for his unpublished Atlas Volumes). Already in 1856 Bleeker had reached the conclusion that it would not be possible to publish a large illustrated work in a more or less reasonable way in the East Indies (Boeseman, 1973). Bleeker finished the manuscript of Volume II in October 1859 and had the text printed in Batavia before September of 1860, when he returned to the Netherlands.
Just like Volume I of Bleeker’s Prodromus, Volume II was published as an issue of the Acta Societatis Scientiarum Indo-Neerlandicae (Vol. X) and as a separate book.
After his return to the Netherlands, Bleeker did not publish a separate Atlas with plates for the two Prodromus volumes. Instead Bleeker started a new series; the “Atlas Ichthyologique des Indes Orientales Néêrlandaises”, for which he rewrote both publications, adapting the classification to the latest insights and reducing the number of plates. For the Cyprini the number of plates was reduced from 53 to 43, while 3 new figures were added (Bleeker, 1862, 1863).