New (old) blue eye pleco

[Jake Adams]

the other day I fed this guy Zuchini for the first time in 13+ years and he ate tan 8" slice down to the skin overnight. He is 11" long, 2" long gill-bristles, and 3/4" long pectoral spine odondotes. Needless to say, this fish is bad a$$. Anyone have a female they want to lease or loan out?

[2wheelsx2]

That's a great looking fish. It's on my "ultimate" list. They also love yams, have your tried those?

[andy75]

Would really love one of these A very beautifull fish you have there.

Andy

[Suckermouth]

Wow, that is one crystal-blue eye! Lovely fish.

[corybrummie2010]

That`s one gorgeous fish you got there,i envy you .Great photo too.

[hotplecogirl]

there is female 14 inches at a LFS here in Boston .My problem is one thousand dollars is too rich for me:{

[2wheelsx2]

Yeah, I know a guy selling one at 13" also. Beautiful male, but in the 4 digit range...a bit much for my taste currently.

[MatsP]

there is female 14 inches at a LFS here in Boston .My problem is one thousand dollars is too rich for me:{

That's not at all bad price, to be honest. The one I've seen here in this country was about 10-12" long (SL) and priced at £1000, which makes it $1600 giver or take a bit.

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Mats

[Blackhawker]

Wow, I want one. Why are these guys SO expensive?

[MatsP]

Wow, I want one. Why are these guys SO expensive?

Because lots of people say "Wow, that's pretty..." combined with the fact that they come from a remote part of Colombia. Until very recently, the area was held by militant guerilla, so it was a definite no-go-area. It's still not a "pleasant" place, but apparently, it's POSSIBLE to go there and get fish, but not many people do. This leads to small supply and big demand -> high prices.

An exporter list I saw not so long ago had these listed at a few hundred dollars each. If you compare that with a neon tetra that cost a few pence/cent at the exporter stage, and sells at $1 or so, the markup to a $1000 or so is fairly small. And you probably only get one fish in a small box, or two fish in a larger box.... So shipping per fish is quite a bit...

--
Mats

[Blackhawker]

Has anybody been able to breed them successfully?

[2wheelsx2]

I haven't heard of any breeding, but it's due to 2 main factors I believe.
1. Size, you'd need a fairly big tank to prevent the male from hurting the female if she wasn't "in the mood". Like 250 g +.
2. Females. All I've ever seen are males.

[MatsP]

I haven't heard of any breeding, but it's due to 2 main factors I believe.
1. Size, you'd need a fairly big tank to prevent the male from hurting the female if she wasn't "in the mood". Like 250 g +.
2. Females. All I've ever seen are males.

Not to mention that very few people have two of these fish in the first place... And you need at least two, of opposite sex, to be able to breed any fish.

--
Mats

[Suckermouth]

Has anyone bred any of the large Panaque?

[andywoolloo]

incredible looking fish.

[MatsP]

Has anyone bred any of the large Panaque?

There was a report some years ago that someone with a massive tank had bred them, but it was never really clear if they were actual Panaque fry or something else. I'm not aware of a confirmed report of any larger panaque species being bred in captivity. And a large portion of that is probably the fact that they are often kept in singles and you need a very large tank to keep two in the same tank when they are mature. And they grow fairly slowly, so it's quite possible that they don't get enough or the right kind of food for the eggs to develop - or there are some other factors that determine their spawning and conditioning.

--
Mats

[Suckermouth]

Has anyone bred any of the large Panaque?

There was a report some years ago that someone with a massive tank had bred them, but it was never really clear if they were actual Panaque fry or something else. I'm not aware of a confirmed report of any larger panaque species being bred in captivity. And a large portion of that is probably the fact that they are often kept in singles and you need a very large tank to keep two in the same tank when they are mature. And they grow fairly slowly, so it's quite possible that they don't get enough or the right kind of food for the eggs to develop - or there are some other factors that determine their spawning and conditioning.

--
Mats

That's what I thought. We'll probably have P. nigrolineatus breeding down to an art before P. cochliodon gets bred.

[Shane]

Has anybody been able to breed them successfully?

There were some attempts when this fish was more commonly available. The main problem was aggression. 3-5 large ones placed in the same tank would knock each other off until one was left. The other issue was that, and I am talking about more than 15 years ago, loricariid captive breeding was still in its infancy. There was not the amount of information available there is now. I suspect far better luck would be had by raising a group together so that dominance was established when they were still young. Placing a group of large adults that do not know each other leads to disaster.
-Shane

[Jools]

Has anyone bred any of the large Panaque?

There is no credible report of any spawning of any of the larger

Panaque

species. The largest one bred is the largest Panaqolus (L205).

Jools

[Mike_Noren]

Sounds like a job for a pond owner in Florida or Thailand.

[DJ-don]

Sounds like a job for a pond owner in Florida or Thailand.

thats what i was thinking maybe a really large pond of 2000 litres plus but think about the filtration needed!!!

and i saw one of these in australia being sold for $6500 nearly the 5 digit mark

if you do manage to get a female let alone be able to support them both in a fricken large tank, it would go down in the fish keeping history!!

[Richard B]

That is a good looking individual

I remember when i had a couple many years back that cost £20 each - less than royals!

I don't think if anyone has a female they'd be prepared to loan it out as it would be a big risk to an expensive fish. There is one for sale over here that is only £500 & that seems like a bargain at the moment.

Additionally is there not some confusion over which species are in the hobby? Cochliodon or suttonorum or Panaque cf. cochliodon`maracaibo....

[MatsP]

The largest one bred is the largest Panaqolus (L205).

I think you mean L204? Last time I looked, L205 was listed as a Peckoltia.

--
Mats

[Shane]

Additionally is there not some confusion over which species are in the hobby? Cochliodon or suttonorum or Panaque cf. cochliodon`maracaibo....

The majority of exports, when the fish was common, were from the Magdalena basin so they were

Panaque cochliodon

. There was one reported (maybe more?) export from the Rio Catatumbo that are being called

Panaque cf_cochliodon`maracaibo`

. I see no reason to distinguish these from P. cochliodon from Colombia and would note that the Rio Catatumbo shares sometghing like 65% of its spp with the Magdalena. I suspect that ultimately P. suttonorum will become a junior synonym of P. cochliodon.

-Shane

[Richard B]

Hmm, ultimately then possibly no confusion...nice one Shane

[apistomaster]

My friend, Ed Ruiz, screen name puertoayacucho, has told me of the project he and Will Cabreza set up under the auspices of the University of Venezuela as part of their graduate studies. They had large earthen ponds supplied with running water and and entire stumps provided as cover. They attempted to breed but never bred these plecos but they did have some Pterophyllum altum spawns in these simulated biotopes.
I will send him the link to this thread so he can accurately relate the scope of their project which was supervised by Dr Donald Taphorn. I'm sure he will be generous about sharing what they learned. I suspect that they need a more massive flow through of fresh water to stand even any chance of pond rearing w this large species. i believe they used P. suttonourum captured from tributaries to and even actually from within Lake Maracaibo rather than then the Colombian form. This is for is even more rare and expensive than the Colombian cousins. I am not expecting any private party to ever successfully breed them in even a large aquarium. Perhaps some public institution may accomplish it someday. They are among the few whose budgets might allow for the purchase of a sufficiently large group.
The level of interest in this larger pleco species always surprises me since they grow to such large sizes and their blue eye is about the only color they have to offer. I'm sure Ed will contribute some of his experience to this topic soon.

[Richard B]

Is there not someone in Greece, who posts here, who has a couple & was "attempting" to get them to spawn, stupidly i can't remember who it is & perhaps he has one & was looking for another... i'll have to do a quick search.....

Edit : Maybe i'm getting confused between "Walter" & "Kostas"......

[puertoayacucho]

Hi guys and thnx Larry for pointing me to this thread. The earthen ponds were't exactly part of our college project and any P. suttonorum that we placed in them, was merely to try and keep them there until we had a better place. These ponds, natural ponds in the Northern Perija foothills were used for breeding P. altum and several other species we would bring from the Orinoco Basin. Our project at the Zulia State University (LUZ) had to do with the founding of the Museum of Science and the Department of Aquariology (Acuariologia), when Prof. Joseph J. Ewald was Director of the School of Biology. Dr. Donald Taphorn was professor of Ichthiosystematics, but he parted to the Llanos University a year or two before we got this going.
As to P. suttonorum, I believe it was Prof. Taphorn who harpooned Wil (Edgar Wilfrido Cabezas) with the quest for this Holy Grail, thought by many to be extinct for many years. I accompanied Wil many times through nearly two decades in search of P. suttoni (Suttonorum) (Schultz, 1941 I beleive, or close) throught both coasts of South Lake Maracaibo and the rivers and streams flowing into the lake from the surrounding Andean foothills. Wil acquired some seven young specimens in the early 80's, some died and some were placed in the ponds layy mentioned. We never recovered those as with time, the owner of the farm where the ponds were, was drove out by the FARC guerilla (Colombian subversives) operating in the area. Shane should be familiar with the situation in tha area of Zulia in Northern Perija (Guasare area).
So for many years we looked for the fish in all the wrong places. The building of a dam on the Rio Motatan may have played a major role in affecting the breeding niches of the species which at one time, taking into account one of Schultzes' colletion sites (Aguaviva, Trujillo in Rio Motatan), were in the foothills of the Western slopes of the Cordillera de Merida in Zulia and Trujillo states. But he also found them in the Rio Yaza, Rio Santa Ana in the Catatumbo district. This is th eother side (Western side of South Lake Maracaibo) in comparison to the Motatan area, on the East side of Sourh Lake Maracaibo).
At some point, we started to worry more about educating fisherman about the species and we offered some financial help to any fisherman that could lead us to information on the species. The word got around and eventually, a fisherman contacted a Biologist from the Andes University in Merida about a specimen he had found. This was in 2007 I believe and Shane received the notice from a different source than I, he also forwarded it to me. Wil wanted to keep the finding private until he and Prof. Taphorn saw the specimen in person...but the news was too big and the pics went around the inertent everywhere. I am not sure if we have posted the pics taken by taphorn while Wil holds a live female in his hands. I have no problem posting them here. Let me see if i can find them.
To finidh up, we have though of P. suttoorum of Lake Maracaibo to be a variatioor subspecies from the Rio Magdalena Blue Eye. They are both very similar, but we believe the P. suttonorum has a slightly higher profile (dorsal to ventral ratio at head) than the P. cocliodon. I am not sure of this and it has been years since I have personally seen these fish. So it is Wil's opinion as to this difference. I am merely repeating his words. At one point, Wil Cabezas was the man to talk to about P. suttonorum, though many people have many things to say today that the South Lake Maracaibo Blue Eyed Panaque came onto the scene again. Oliver Lucanus caught a plane and visited South Lake Maracaibo personally in November 2007..he made direct contact with the source and did some importations back then...these fish, I understand, were the real thing. He now announces them as P. suttonorum sp. Colombia...well, I was offered those for 15 bucks a piece some ten years ago by a Baranquilla exporter.
Someone mentioned the need for having two specimens in adjacent tanks for comparison, a Lake Maracaibo and a Magdalena River specimen, to be able to really do someting interesting. i believe this would really be of help.
The Magdalena River Basin and the Lake Maracaibo Basin are separated by the Perija Range, the northernmost tip of the Andes Mountains which separate Northwestern Venezuela and Northeastern Colombia and the Catatumbo River and Magdalena River, though having there watersheds very close to each other, have no connection and are isolated by very high mountand in the central Colombain Andes. Taking into account that these are young mountains from a geological POV...the species may very well have been there before being isolated into the two subbasins.
And please forgive the many typo errors, but my keyboard or something did not help.
Regards
Ed

[MatsP]

Ed, very interesting.

If you can find the photo, please send it to me: mats at planetcatfish dot com, and I will post it to the P. suttoni page.

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Mats

[nvcichlids]

http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/ ... 1270255805

Supposedly a breeding pair for $1,000 plus they have young (fry?) from this same pair? So they must have been bred based off this guy's for sale listing.