Any suggestions on the identity of this pleco

[Ottofan2003]

Any sugestions

[Acanthicus]

It´s not a Hypostomus faveolus / L 37, looks more like a species of the Hypostomus cochliodon - group to me.

[Ottofan2003]

sorry new to this... know common names and l an lda numbers. can you give example?

[Richard B]

sorry new to this... know common names and l an lda numbers. can you give example?

Some fish don't have an L or LDA number. Common names are often not great as they aren't the same worldwide or are too vague - like "brownspot cat".

The L number is assigned for unidentified species. Sometimes a species will then be described and many people stop using the L number - for example L046 became Hypancistrus Zebra, L134 became Peckoltia Compta.

The fish in your pic is hard to identify and belongs to a group of similar looking, hard to identify fish (the Hypostomus cochliodon group) - an example would be L050. or

Hypostomus boulengeri

as another example. If wording appears in purple there is generally a link behind it to further details, which i have shown with H. Boulengeri above - just click the purple writing...

This is a rather crude description of the relationship between common names, L/LDA numbers and actual(scientific) names. Hope this helps.

[Acanthicus]

The Hypostomus cochliodon - group is a group of catfish, that is looked at in two different ways. Some think it is an own genus called Cochliodon (like me), others say it is just a special group inside of the genus Hypostomus. Your fish looks like one of these to me. But as Richard already pointed out, these fish aren´t easy to identify, cause there are so many species looking similar to each other.

Do you know where your fish comes from?

This one, L 87, looks a bit like yours:

L087

cheers, Daniel
[Mod edit: Update clog-link to use "persistant" format. --Mats]