Shopping for plecos question

[bekateen]

Hi All,

So my son has expressed interest in getting either gold nugget plecos or green phantom plecos. But both of those species are too big for our largest tank, and at this time we are not prepared to buy a bigger aquarium.

Are there any small (preferably under 4") plecos that resemble either gold nugget or green phantom plecos?

Thanks,
Eric

[dpm1]

May sound obvious but have you tried searching by size?
Also worth ensuring you refine it as Loricariidae only, and maybe order by number of keepers to weed out the many zeros that indicate species you are unlikely to be able to source anyway.

...and then just trawl through the pix until you spot what you want.

[bekateen]

Hi,

Thanks for suggesting that. And yes I did the species search; I chose Species search > Loricariidae > and then various size brackets so that the results didn't exceed 100 spp. I searched everywhere from 0 to 110 mm length.

There were a few spp. that caught my eye:

1. Hypancistrus sp(l262)
   ( I thought the Rio Jamanxim (yellow fins) morph sort of resembled a green phantom, a little bit anyway; although I seriously doubt we'd ever find those around here or find a LFS with the right connections to get any)
2. Spectracanthicus punctatissimus
3. Hypancistrus sp(l004)
4. I also saw several
   Ancistrus
   that were rather generically spotted, but again, I couldn't discern that the colors would be striking like gold nuggets.

There were several other white-spotted dark skinned plecos I saw. The reason why I brought this to the forum is that a lot of times the fish we find in stores don't bear a very close color resemblance (esp. color brilliance) to the colors seen in photographs. We've seen real gold nuggets, and their spots are distinctly yellow, not grey, tan, white or faded.

One other reason I brought this to the forum - there are some spp and L numbers that don't have SL size listings, so they don't even appear in any searches based on size; in fact they get omitted. E.g.,

Panaqolus sp(l397)

looks like a pretty small pleco. It's not the color scheme we're looking for, but I would think it's under 4" based on the photographs. But it doesn't come up at all since it has no size listed (even if I increase max size to 500 mm and specify Genus Panaqolus).

On a side note, I also came across

Hypancistrus sp(l174)

, which I think looks really neat, but that's not what my son was looking for.

[CharlieM9]

Eric,

Have him take a look at L201 or hypancistrus contradens or even L136?. They are close to the gold nugget, but no gold seams on the fins. If it's the seams he likes on them maybe L183?

I cannot think of any that would be like the green phantoms off the top of my head...

[PlecosAndLoaches]

Re: L200, in terms of looks, the closest thing I can think of is

Hemiancistrus guahiborum

. The profile says they grow to 5.9", but I've never seen them bigger than 4". Agreed on L201 and H. contradens - both excellent and stay small and add a little intrigue to the tank because they like to hide.

[Jools]

Can you get

L309

in the US?

Jools

[bekateen]

Hi All,

Thanks for the suggestions. You've brought up a lot of attractive spp. I'll discuss them with my son and then start searching around.

Jools, to answer your question, since I've never focused on L309 before, I've never looked for it in stores. I'll need to ask around, but my nearby stores are pretty limited. Maybe in San Francisco.

Thanks again, everyone.

Cheers, Eric

[vanillarum]

Here is a fairly all inclusive list of small plecos. Good luck.

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/aquariu ... hp?t=92700