History of the Common Pleco [Hypostomus]

[racoll]

I'm doing a bit of research for a COTM on the common pleco Pterygoplichthys pardalis, but was wondering if anyone had any information on the original commons, the Hypostomus spp.

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I can't find much with the forum search.

Which species were imported as commons?
Where did they come from?
When were they replaced by the Pterygoplichthys in the trade?

If anyone can remember or has any old aquarium books/mags with photos, that may help a lot.

[MatsP]

One data point is that I had two different Hypostomus commons in the early to mid 1980's. I can probably find a negative/slide photo of one or both of them, but I'm pretty darn sure they were H. plecostomus or something very similar looking.

--
Mats

[racoll]

Excellent.

I guess the best the evidence will be if someone knows where the imports were coming from. Perhaps someone who used to work in an aquarium store?

[Chrysichthys]

Perhaps someone who used to work in an aquarium store?

The Goldfish Bowl always stocks what they call 'true plecostomus'. I have a nice big one myself which I bought there. I don't know if they really are the original Hypostomus plecostomus given the large number of similar species, but the 9-10 dorsal rays rule out Pterygoplichthys. I can possibly get pics or info (such as where they come from) if you let me know what you need.

[Chrysichthys]

any old aquarium books/mags with photos, that may help a lot

David Sands's book on South American catfish has a pic of the 'old' common. It dates from the 1980s but I think it is still in print.

[lfinley58]

Hi all.

Racoll: I am not sure how far you wish to go back with your project. For the early starting date you would have to go back to the middle 1890's. Hypostomus identified at the time as Hypostomus commersonii [sic] were imported from southern South America into Germany during that time period. If you wish I can narrow down the date for you.

Lee

[racoll]

The Goldfish Bowl always stocks what they call 'true plecostomus'. I have a nice big one myself which I bought there. I don't know if they really are the original Hypostomus plecostomus given the large number of similar species, but the 9-10 dorsal rays rule out Pterygoplichthys. I can possibly get pics or info (such as where they come from) if you let me know what you need.

I think the common Hypostomus spp. imported now are from Colombia (

Hypostomus plecostomoides

) and Peru (can't remember the L number).

For the early starting date you would have to go back to the middle 1890's. Hypostomus identified at the time as Hypostomus commersonii [sic] were imported from southern South America into Germany during that time period. If you wish I can narrow down the date for you.

I think I am most interested in when the aquarium hobby was getting more popular, as in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The best hope is finding out which countries were exporting at these times, and then making an inference of the species found in these areas.

[Mike_Noren]

I raided my bookshelf, and found a picture of a pleco in two of my childhood aquarium books.

First out is "Plecostomus punctatus" from IPC Freshwater Tropical Fishes, 1976. According to the book it's from "southern brazil" and grows to 30 cm in the wild, but "considerably less in captivity".




That's an Ancistrus, isn't it? That's how I remember Common Ancistrus looking back in the day, before the present Common Ancistrus.

The second is "Plecostomus plecostomus" from Aquariumfishes: A Kingfisher Guide, 1980. According to the book it's from "northern south-america".




As an aside I'm amazed at how poor the aquarium books apparently were back then. Especially the IPC book misidentifies close to half the species listed, and is astonishingly inaccurate in its descriptions.


Also, here's a drawing of a "Plecostomus commersonii" from a mail-order catalog from the company Scholze & Pötzschke, 1930.
http://www.akvarielagret.se/reptilkat/bilder/154.jpg


EDIT: the links to the pictures still work; it just seem as if Photobucket didn't like that I supplied thumbnails?

[apistomaster]

As one of "the old ones" in this hobby, I am able to look back at books that predate me that are in my collection. I also opened a fish shop in 1966. I had some ancient price lists from the old Aquastock Company as well as a book on breeding fish fish translated from German.
Back then, THE Plecostomus was the now Hypostomus mainly collected from Trinidad. The big Corydoras aeneus were also being collected there. Plecostomus was the generic name.
None of the photos you posted were Ancistrus.

For me, about 1970, I began receiving a different fish whenever I ordered Plecostomus. I would open a box and find I had received these ugly plecos with big brushy whiskers all over their heads and would wonder what the heck am I going to do with these? They aren't the Plecostomus my customers were familiar with.
All these years later I realize I was receiving beautiful adult Ancistrus sp, most likely the variety now being sold as Medusa Ancistrus and I was only paying $0.75 each in 100 lots.
It was not too long after that when pool raise Hypostomus juveniles began appearing from tropical fish hatcheries located in Southern Florida.

[barksten]

I raided my bookshelf, and found a picture of a pl*co in two of my childhood aquarium books.

First out is "Plecostomus punctatus" from IPC Freshwater Tropical Fishes, 1976. According to the book it's from "southern brazil" and grows to 30 cm in the wild, but "considerably less in captivity".

I have the same book (Swedish translation) with the same pictures. My edition is from 1973.

[Marc van Arc]

The book "Exotic Aquarium Fishes" by Wm. T. Innes (1947) already lists it as "Plecostomus plecostomus".

[racoll]

Back then, THE Plecostomus was the now Hypostomus mainly collected from Trinidad

Great info Larry. I thought you would remember! Probably

Hypostomus plecostomus

or

Hypostomus robinii

then?

I can't find any official records of H. plecostomus from Trinidad though....

It does make sense, as other old faces like C. aeneus and guppies are also from Trinidad.

As an aside I'm amazed at how poor the aquarium books apparently were back then. Especially the IPC book misidentifies close to half the species listed, and is astonishingly inaccurate in its descriptions.

Yes, indeed. They had a lot less access to the kind of information we have nowadays.

[lfinley58]

Hi all.

The Innes Exotic Aquarium Fishes mentioned by Marc was first published in 1935 and that earlier edition also has the Hypostomus plecostomus entry included.

Lee

[apistomaster]

Quoting racoll,
"I can't find any official records of H. plecostomus from Trinidad though...."

This was information provided by wholesalers in the late '60's, we all know how reliable their info can be.
The actual story they were telling was that the common plecos had been "fished out" in Trinidad.
I think I once found a reference other than my suppliers about this but if so, it is long lost in fact and in my mind.
The only fact I'm sure of is that I am getting old enough to forget half of what I once knew.
Aha! Google to the rescue: http://www.fao.org/fishery/countrysector/FI-CP_TT
Scroll down to the fresh water fisheries. Hypostomus are listed as one of the species with some economic potential.
I googled: "Hypostomus on Island of Trinidad" and got other hits. Hypostomus species are/were indigenous to Trinidad.

[iramjohn]

Our (Trinidadian) pleco is H. robinii. As best I remember, it's still exported, and it's still fairly common.

[apistomaster]

I remember something else I experienced when I had my fish shop.
I was only familiar with "the common Plecostomus" until about 1969 I had a customer bring in a 17 year old, 17.5 inch specimen of what I now know to have been a P. pardalis.

[Jools]

Our (Trinidadian) pl*co is H. robinii. As best I remember, it's still exported, and it's still fairly common.

I'm not aware of Trinidad exports being current for at least the last 20 years into the shops in the UK I frequented over that time. Bear in mind also that Hypostomus were farm bred initially in Florida. The shift to Pterygoplichthys may be intertwined with the shift to Far Eastern farm bred stock at least in part and I think a lot of that was kicked off by wild imports of the snow king pleco which, to my mind at least, is where you can trace back "attractive" larger plecos. Captive bred Pterygoplichthys gibbiceps came soon thereafter. Pterygoplichthys nowadays are found commonly in shops as they are the cheapest pleco to mass produce (as opposed to Bristlenoses etc) and probably took over from farm raised Hypostomus again because of the "snow king" in the 1970's.

I think the source of the common pleco has moved with the political landscape over time. Beginning with Argentina which probably had the best euro-facing infrastructure in 1900 or so. I don't really know much about that variance but Guyana and Suriname proably also had a role to play in the past (pre 1970's?) moving into Axelrod's influence on export patterns which moved it to Brazil and we end up today with a mix of locations due to the proliferation of air routes.

Barbie is keeping "my" H. robinii if that is of interest.

Jools

[featherback]

I found this in my shelf:

Akvarieboka, first edition 1955, secound (this) edition 1960

Plecostomus plecostomus





The only thing it says about origin is South America.

-FB

[Carp37]

My first recollection of plecos was in the early 80s, when they tended to be referred to as "Hypostomus sp." I thought that even then they were being bred in the Far East (at least for UK imports) and that was part of the problem for identification- that they just put a bunch of fish in a rectangular pond and periodically harvested it, and that there might be several species there that all look pretty similar, and no-one was likely to have an original collecting location for them (this was before anyone knew just how many loricariids there were). Gibbys suddenly turned up in numbers in the UK in the mid-80s before "ordinary" aquarists had much suspicion of how big they got (most of the Hypostomus seemed to top out at around 8", although they could get to over 1'), and I had thought they also came from the Far East fish farms.

[DeepFriedIctalurus]

Though I can't go back all that far in years with my experience in the hobby (late 80's or around there), by then, Pterygoplichthys were already the dominant common by then from what I can remember. I do have a couple older books that seem to accurately identify the pictured suckers as H.plecostomus anyway, and I may be able to access those books for scanning soon.

For the last several years now, I have been paying close attention to imported "common ple cos", and I currently keep 4 of them. The most common species I run across look VERY similar to H.robinii, including one of my own. These may actually be farmed even today, as I used to see new batches of these show up in local shops that just looked way too good to be fresh imports. Along with that fish I have one that's a dead-ringer for the

Hypostomus plecostomus

pictured in the e-log, another that's slimmer with larger spots that shares the lyre-tail of the H.plecostomus but has a larger dorsal fin, and the largest male that's somewhat long-bodied and has very small spots in comparison to the others.

Now I can't say for certain what species ANY of my 4 fish are, but I can say with certainty that they represent 4 different species. None of which looked much like the juvies pictured in the

Hypostomus punctatus

entry for the e-log though..

I think the common Hypostomus spp. imported now are from Colombia (

Hypostomus plecostomoides

) and Peru (can't remember the L number).

I agree that a many, if not all of the imports are coming from these 2 countries today, but only one of the many hundreds to possibly thousands I've seen for myself was H.plecostomoides. Of course this is in the US, these cheap imported Hypostomus may not be quite so cheap overseas...which might lead to the more unusual species like the Cochliodon-types showing up more often?

[racoll]

Peru (can't remember the L number).

Just remembered the L number of the Hypostomus I have seen coming frequently out of Peru, it is L266, and while I have seen loads of them in the last couple of years, now I realise that a there isn't a pic of one for the cat-elog, I can't seem to see them anywhere......

[Shane]

Jools is right on track. I would bet there have been 15 or more fishes in the trade over the years that have been the "common pleco" of their era. Earliest shipments would most likely track to Argentina when they came in with C. paleatus, the BA tetra, etc and/or NE South America (Trinidad, the Guyanas, etc). The actual common pleco (and at any one time there were likely several spp going under that name) has changed as different countries have come and gone as major exportation hubs. The number of spp going under the name common pleco stabilized somewhat with captive breeding in massive numbers in Florida and the Far East, but thrown into this mix are wild imports of common plecos from mainly Brazil, Peru, and Colombia.
The fact is that it has only been in the last few years, with the growth of plecomania, that anyone started paying enough attention to realize that the common pleco was actually a term used to lump together several spp from several genera that were basically not distinct enough from each other to warrant their own common names.
-Shane

[Carp37]

The fact is that it has only been in the last few years, with the growth of plecomania, that anyone started paying enough attention to realize that the common pl*co was actually a term used to lump together several spp from several genera that were basically not distinct enough from each other to warrant their own common names.
-Shane

I agree with everything Shane said until the last paragraph- whilst it's true that it's only been in the last few years that anyone's had enough info/interest to try to identify the larger commons to species level, even in the 70s and 80s it was at least recognised that there were several species available, it's just that no-one had enough RELIABLE info to attempt to identify them down to species level.

Part of this was possibly a case of them looking pretty similar, but a lot of it was down to not knowing the collection point of the original stock for captive-breds, plus also the fact that there were a lot of gaps in the species aquarists had come in contact with- when there weren't that many collecting sites previously, there's always the nagging question of whether a species has been described or not, because the collecting points don't necessarily correspond to where museum specimens were collected. Just look at Burgess' TFH Catfish Atlas- over half the current plecs (which, granted, don't qualify as "commons") aren't even represented in there.

The growth of internet sites, especially this one (so kudos to Jools and Shane) has been instrumental in improving aquarist's knowledge, because previously it was a case of trying to get hold of specialist scientific papers (which vary hugely in quality, can sometimes be in quite obscure journals, often contradict other papers, and are not usually written in a way that makes the salient points easy to understand for a layperson; if they're not in English that also poses a problem for troglodytes like me!), or looking for updates in magazines. At least with the internet, information can be updated far more quickly, plus (as Shane recognised), the sudden surge in interest in loricariids makes them "sexier".