Sold as Ranger Pl*co from Peru

[Rory]

This little guy is 1" long incl. the tail. Any ideas?

[DutchFry]

this youngster is very beautiful in colouration. unfortunately these colours disappear when the fish ages.

this one is from the genus Pterygoplichthys as it has more then 10 dorsal fin rays. young fish are sometimes a bit difficult to identify, but it might be

Pterygoplichthys gibbiceps

or

Pterygoplichthys punctatus

. I think it's P. punctatus.

[Bas Pels]

Although I got both Pt gibbyceps and punctata, I can not tell whether you got one of them, because I never saw a Pt gibbyceps at ~1 inch, the size your fishes are

Perhaps that is in fact the clue: assuming gibbyceps is not sold at 1 inch, and punctata is, you should have gotten punctata.

Be glad with them, they are not als colorfull as gibbyceps, but they remain much smaller:

after 1 year, most of my gibbys were around 20 cm. At 3 years they are nearly 40 cm. I got one at 20 years, it is naerly 50 cm

I got my punctatus now 3 years, and would estimate their size at 15 cm

both groupes are 6 fishes, all houded groupwise for 1 year and than individually

[Rory]

Whoa, thanks guys. I didn't know about the number of rays. I checked out the Pterygoplichthys pages and some of the juvenile pics on the weberi page look like a dead ringer. I've been looking through hundreds of pics before, but if you don't know what you're looking for, it's a needle in a haystack. I hope he'll turn out to be the smaller kind. I don't want to have to return him when he gets too big, which is what I was offered at my LFS (otherwise I would not have taken him).

Thanks again, I really appreciate the help.

[MatsP]

If you search the Cat-eLog for Common Name of "ranger", you get

Pterygoplichthys punctatus

- but that's not to say that some other similar looking fish can't be sold under the same name, e.g. P. weberi

--
Mats

[Rory]

If you search the Cat-eLog for Common Name of "ranger", you get

Pterygoplichthys punctatus

- but that's not to say that some other similar looking fish can't be sold under the same name, e.g. P. weberiMats

And I'm pretty sure I looked at that picture before and thought 'That looks nothing like mine', but only now that I looked at its cousins and saw how different the juvenile weberis look from the adults, did I think to google for some juvenile punctatus pics. Found some on scotcat, and they also look similar to mine. I feel a bit silly now. Can I chalk that up under beginner mistake?

[Yann]

Hi!!

I think it is actually

Pterygoplichthys weberi

Cheers
Yann

[racoll]

The ranger pleco was always considered P. punctatus. When was it re-identified as P. weberi?

[MatsP]

The description (linked in the P. weberi cat-elog page) says that they don't overlap, and I suspect that any fish coming out of Peru would be P. weberi, rather than P. puncatus, judging from the distribution map of the two - so it's quite possible that any fish sold as "Ranger pleco" is actually P. weberi - this species was only recently described, so it may well be that earlier specimens were misidentified.

[That's just what I think - you read for yourself, and if you think different, please say so].

--
Mats

[Rory]

I do think the pics of the weberi look a little more like mine. So I'm assuming for now that that's what I have and keep my fingers crossed he doesn't grow too big.

Thanks everyone.