Can Anyone Identify this "Pleco"?

[rcbows]

I have looked and looked to ID this unusual Pleco. It's about 2 years old and only 7", most of the time it has striped body with a dusky brown color. When stressed it get darker like this and the stripes seem to go away. I bought (2) in a batch of Plecos. The Plecos grew over 12" long, but these two (2)stopped at 7". They came from a chain petstore and a major supplier?



Ron

[Silurus]

This looks like some kind of

Hypostomus

. Identification to species would be difficult.

[rcbows]

Thank You! That helped me get an Idea of the species. I looked at all the pictures on-line here and it looks most like Hypostomus boulengeri. Would I be wrong in calling it that or should I just call it Hypostomus sp?


Ron

[Shane]

Take a look at

Hypostomus plecostomus

as well.
-Shane

[rcbows]

I had Common Plecostomus at the same time and they looked entirely different! They looked more like the Hypostomus boulengeri, which I know are rare, but could it be possible, because they only grew 7". My common Plecos grew over 12"! It happens a lot because the suppliers gets fish in from SA and they are mislabeled and mixed together because they really don't know what they are.

Ron

[Narwhal72]

Common plecos are generally Pterygoplichthys pardalis or Pterygoplichthys disjunctivitus or a hybrid of the two sometimes (if Florida raised). Common plecos are rarely exported as they are no longer valuable enough since they raised by the millions in Florida.

[Jools]

Common plecos are rarely exported as they are no longer valuable enough since they raised by the millions in Florida.

Hypostomus

("common" plecos) are exported every year, but as you say (I am not sure about millions) lots of

Pterygoplichthys

are shipped from Florida too. However, none of the Florida fish have black spots on the head with a brown background like the pictured fish. The number of rays in the dorsal fin will tell for sure but I'm 99% sure this is a

Hypostomus

just going on jizz (I've decided to borrow that term as it's rather useful in the online fish world!).

I'd plump for

Hypostomus punctatus

.

Jools

[Narwhal72]

Hypostomus are exported every year but the number of them exported to the US has dropped considerably in recent years because of the high cost of freight and the availability of cheap common plecos from Florida (and now showing up in Texas and Louisiana as invasives).

If you reread the previous post. He says he had other common plecos at the same time that looked different and grew over 12". Which leads me to believe his other plecos (not the one in the picture) were Pterygoplichthys.

I believe that the fish in the picture is likely Hypostomus plecostomus.

As far as the millions of plecos. Petco and Petsmart (the two largest chains in the U.S. have a combined total of about 3000 stores. If they sold 28 plecos a month (just less than one a day) they would have sold one million plecos annually. Since their common plecos come from Florida the volume is impressive the volume of plecos raised there. So it may not be millions but it is definitely well over a million sold in the U.S. annually.

Andy

[Jools]

Nope, still don't understand - I'll dive out of this one.

Jools

[rcbows]

I don't understand, I go to (3) different Petco's and I never see a Pleco in there tanks. I have asked and they say either they are out or say there is a new order coming on such & such a day!

I did talk to a fish farmer last night at a club meeting and he said there is a species that they get, that is smaller than the regular common pleco and they sell them to one of the large distributors here in this area of Florida! It was exactly what he described but he did not know the scientific name for it either!

Ron

[Narwhal72]

I was just in my local Petco Monday getting dog food and they had two tanks with about a dozen 2" Pterygoplichthys ea.

[rmc]

Even if there aren't millions of "Florida Plecos" there are surely millions of eggs. If you haven't already take a look at this:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworl ... cle_id=489

In my opinion the egg collecting better explains the extremely large number of small (I'm assuming juvenile) Pterygoplicthys sp. in our stores (both large chain stores like Petco, Petsmart, Walmart, etc. and some of the LFS in my experience).

Andy I bought some juvenile plecos in the early 2000's (like 2001) and I was under the impression that they were Hypostomus plecostomus. Was I wrong? when did the Pterygoplicthys take over in our stores?

[rcbows]

http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworl ... cle_id=489

Yes that is what the talk at the club meeting was last night. Everyone now collects eggs in the wild and then hatches them and then puts them in growout ponds. Funny maybe its the area the Petco's are in Tampa & Lakeland, FL. Who knows!

Ron

[Narwhal72]

Pterygoplichthys started taking over in the late 80's/early 90's.

From what I was told, the legend is that a large farm/distributor in Florida (I won't mention their name) started producing Pterygoplichthys plecos in such large quantities and low prices that the other farms simply got out of the business of importing Hypostomus or breeding their own and switched over to the more prolific Pterygoplichthys.

Of course this was before the L number craze hit the U.S. and people only bought plecos as algae eaters. After the L number craze hit people started buying plecos just to have cool plecos. A ton more species started being imported including the Hypostomus again. But not in the numbers there were before. It's a lot more profitable to bring in a box of Peckoltia or Hypancistrus than it is to bring in a box of Hypostomus.

Nowadays, the BN plecos seem to be taking over from Pterygoplichthys which is a pretty good thing as they are much better suited to the aquarium.

Andy