My spotted orange seam plecos: Hemiancistrus guahiborum (L106)

[Mol_PMB]

Although I've read the description of L122, I'm not sure I would be able to tell the difference between it and guahiborum if I saw them both in a fish store.

I agree, and with only one specimen I couldn't be at all sure. But it didn't seem particularly low-profile compared to your L106s.
I was very tempted, it was a 3" fish at less than £20.

[bekateen]

...it was a 3" fish at less than £20.

Gosh, no matter how long I stay in this hobby, no matter how often the issue presents itself, I will forever be flabbergasted by the discrepancies in availability and price between continents! We can't find L397 at a reasonable price in the USA, and yet fish like guahiborum are routinely available for the equivalent of £10. Go figure.

[bekateen]

And then there were four...

Woke up this morning to find two guahiborum dead, for no obvious reasons, one wedged between rocks and the other deep inside a bamboo cave. I suppose it could have been aggression-related, but I've never seen serious fights before and neither showed signs of injury.

It might have been my fault because in an effort to stimulate spawning, I recently (two days ago) did a water change with 50% DI water, dropping the conductivity from about 400 to 200. If I recall correctly, I've done that before without consequence, but maybe I'm thinking of another aquarium with different fish. These fish look like they've been dead for at least one day.

Does anybody know if guahiborum should be able to handle this?

Regards, Eric

[bekateen]

Today I'm stripping down now my

Hemiancistrus guahiborum

tank for a deep cleaning. I'm amazed at how big (relatively speaking) these fish are getting. Managed to take an (unflattering) quick video of them because otherwise I probably won't see them for a while. They are unsettled in the video because most of the tank decor and hiding places are removed for cleaning. (FYI, For safety, the heater and internal pumps are unplugged, only an airstone is operating at the moment. My hand is in the tank to usher the fish to the front; without my hand, they all instantly swim to the back and hide behind foam blocks, LOL)

Cheers, Eric

Spotted orange seam plecos (Hemiancistrus guahiborum, L106)

[pleconut]

Looking good now Eric.

[bekateen]

Thanks Teresa. By the way, fish #4 (purchased with the bloody pectoral spine) has fattened out somewhat compared to the rest and has a slightly bulbous genital papilla, so I'm pretty confident it's a female. The largest fish is staying slim so I'm pretty sure it's male. I haven't studied the other two fish recently to tell their genders.

[pleconut]

Might be worth checking the other two, when you next work on the tank.

[Jobro]

Looking under the pleco skirts is one of my favourite tasks. But I usually end up as wise as before

If they are ever out in the open and you can snatch a good picture on them (without stress colouration), I would like to see that.

[bekateen]

It was exactly one year ago yesterday that I picked up the six guahiborum (and then lost two in April). By coincidence, one of my LFS got a new shipment of these in Friday night from Ruinemans, so I picked up three more to build my group up again. These are a little smaller (largest fish 50mm SL) than the last group but at least I know they'll catch up within the next year.

The new fish are also a little thin, but their colors are great and their fins intact, so I'm hopeful they'll adjust well to the aquarium.

Once out of quarantine, I'll combine the two groups and move them from the 10gal tanks they are in currently to a 40gal which I'm preparing at work (it's intended for my work corys, but there will be extra capacity).

The 40gal tank will be my first tank with an HMF. It's coming from SwissTropicals; this is a standard 40gal (not 40 breeder or 40 long), so Stephen is cutting a custom sized foam for me.

Photos when the tank is complete.

Cheers, Eric

[pleconut]

More new fish. Looks good and in slightly better condition. Nice project underway now.Good Luck!

[bekateen]

Thanks Teresa.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Moving my four older guahiborum from a measly 10 gal to a 40 gal (dimensionally only 37 gal) where they will join two younger specimens. Maybe now something will happen.

When I pulled them from the tank I was surprised at how big they had gotten - the big male is now 85mm SL. The largest wild specimens reach 125mm, I can't imagine what they look like at that size. YIKES!

Notice you can still ID the female from the bent pectoral spine. When I first bought her, she arrived with a broken and bleeding left pectoral spine, and a deformed right spine. In these photos, you can still see the bent right pectoral spine.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Female, ~75mm SL

[bekateen]

Two other unsexed specimens. I believe they both might be subordinate males, or the top (70mm SL) is female and the bottom (75mm SL) is male. The possible sexing difference is suggested by the relative lengths of the pelvic fins (on my sexed fish, the male has larger pelvic fins).

Thanks @ridout for noticing the difference.

[bekateen]

Here's the tank they went into - a 40 gal standard tank (really 37 gal) with HMF on the right side. One fish is visible in the cave at the bottom left side of tank.

[stuby]

Very nice setup and fish Eric! I actually got some of the L106's too about the same time you got yours. I need to move mine as well.... they are in a 20 long and they are getting to the point that a little more space is needed.

Chuck

[bekateen]

Very nice setup and fish Eric! I actually got some of the L106's too about the same time you got yours. I need to move mine as well.... they are in a 20 long and they are getting to the point that a little more space is needed.

Thanks, Chuck.

I'm curious how fast yours are growing. How big are yours now? What are you feeding yours? I haven't had mine on any special diet. In fact, I'm not really sure what they like! Honestly, I think their main food is wood. They eat other foods, but nothing voraciously and I often have to remove uneaten food (shrimp, clams, sweet potato).

I hope yours breed for you too...

...

... I just hope mine breed first.

{To be honest, I'll be shocked if mine ever breed. They seem to like sitting on their fins, watching my hair turn more gray! }

Cheers, Eric

[Jobro]

Two other unsexed specimens. I believe they both might be subordinate males, or the top (70mm SL) is female and the bottom (75mm SL) is male. The possible sexing difference is suggested by the relative lengths of the pelvic fins (on my sexed fish, the male has larger pelvic fins).

Thanks @ridout for noticing the difference.

I would guess you got another Pair there. Dichromatismus seems to be a thing with many plecos, especially when you remove them from their comfort zone, males tend to lose a lot of colouration while females stay calmer (they are not obsessed about losing their silly caves xD). Top specimen seems to be rounder as well.

If the new tank is all settled in and running well, I would go for very soft water, like doing some WC with pure RO water. Then do nothing for at least one month. No Waterchanges. Nitrate will raise and PH will drop. Only visit them once a day for feeding, leave them alone as far as possible. Hands out of the tank!

If you got no spawns after 4-6 weeks, do a big Waterchange with slightly colder, hard tap water. Chances are high you might see spawns before or after the waterchange.

I had spawns on L183, L260 and L168/52 during the "no waterchange"-phases and spawns on L134 after the waterchange.

[stuby]

Very nice setup and fish Eric! I actually got some of the L106's too about the same time you got yours. I need to move mine as well.... they are in a 20 long and they are getting to the point that a little more space is needed.

Thanks, Chuck.

I'm curious how fast yours are growing. How big are yours now? What are you feeding yours? I haven't had mine on any special diet. In fact, I'm not really sure what they like! Honestly, I think their main food is wood. They eat other foods, but nothing voraciously and I often have to remove uneaten food (shrimp, clams, sweet potato).

I hope yours breed for you too...

...

... I just hope mine breed first.

{To be honest, I'll be shocked if mine ever breed. They seem to like sitting on their fins, watching my hair turn more gray! }

Cheers, Eric

I guess it will be a race to see who gets them to breed first them! lol I did have a trapping for a couple days..... nothing come of it. I haven't been feeding anything special really.... just my normal mix of pellet and stick foods with the occasional treat of blood worms or whatnot. They always seem to eat everything I put in there. Mine aren't to picky when it come to feeding time. I will have to get back to you on their size. I know they have grown but I have no idea how much.

Chuck

I have a feeling that they are like L147's and L377's when it come to breeding.... and just takes time for them to mature and the right conditions. But we will see.....

[bekateen]

I would guess you got another Pair there. Dichromatismus seems to be a thing with many plecos, especially when you remove them from their comfort zone, males tend to lose a lot of colouration while females stay calmer (they are not obsessed about losing their silly caves xD). Top specimen seems to be rounder as well.

Thanks for the ideas Johannes. Yes the upper fish is a little wider and has the shorter pelvic fins than the lower fish, so I might have two pairs. Plus I have two small fish in the tank too, much too small to breed, but they will grow. As for dichromatic color, you may be right for this pair, but the larger male and female are exactly the same color (you can see in their dorsal photos), so I'm not sure how consistent or reliable that difference will be.

As for the water manipulations, this tank is at my work, so it's not going to get a lot of attention or manipulation on a daily basis; perhaps it will get a little more neglect than my other tanks. While I won't intentionally give it a dry season/wet season cycle, that may end up happening if work is crazy busy. .

I guess it will be a race to see who gets them to breed first them! lol I did have a trapping for a couple days..... nothing come of it. I haven't been feeding anything special really.... just my normal mix of pellet and stick foods with the occasional treat of blood worms or whatnot. They always seem to eat everything I put in there. Mine aren't to picky when it come to feeding time. I will have to get back to you on their size. I know they have grown but I have no idea how much.

Chuck

I have a feeling that they are like L147's and L377's when it come to breeding.... and just takes time for them to mature and the right conditions. But we will see.....

Thanks for the extra info Chuck. And I agree, the fish probably just need to mature to a size where they feel ready. Best of luck to you. Between you, me, and everyone else keeping these, I know someone will spawn them. I suspect someone, somewhere has already spawned them. And I know for a fact that someone in Europe has spawned the related fish,

Pseudancistrus sp(l122)

. I saw photos on Facebook.

Cheers, Eric

[stuby]

I measured one of them today.... she was just over 5" TL so about 10.5cm SL. It will be interesting to see how yours do compared to mine..... I looked up exactly when I got mine and it was August of 2015. Can't remember how big they where when I first got them.... but they are about the same size now at least.

Chuck

[bekateen]

I measured one of them today.... she was just over 5" TL so about 10.5cm SL. It will be interesting to see how yours do compared to mine..... I looked up exactly when I got mine and it was August of 2015. Can't remember how big they where when I first got them.... but they are about the same size now at least.

Thanks again Chuck.

I got my first fish Dec 2015. At the time, the largest was 60mm SL and the smallest two about 50mm SL (the other three were 55mm SL). I had two die from that group of six, but I don't know if either of the dead fish was my largest or smallest (I wish I could know). From my photos yesterday, my large male is now approximately 110mm TL = 4.3" TL... Much smaller than yours, which must be whoppers!

Please keep me informed of your progress, as I will you via this thread.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

@Racoll, this next post reminds me of you. My exercise and efforts are fraught with error, but since the results were as predicted, I'm encouraged to know if the same data could be obtained with more careful photos/measurements from a greater number of fish.

Hi All, As mentioned above, it was brought to my attention that the male H. guahiborum might have larger (relatively speaking) pelvic fins than do females of the same species.

I have four fish to examine from the above photos - 1 male, 1 female, and 2 uncertain, but quite likely (based on body shape hints) another male and female (but maybe two subordinate males). So I took the time to use the dorsal view images of all four fish to measure the pixel sizes of the visible portions of the pectoral and pelvic fins of each specimen, then convert these to millimeters and express the results as a ratio of Pectoral spine length / Pelvic spine length. The idea of this ratio is that if the pelvic fins are bigger on males than on females, we would expect the ratio to be smaller in males (because the larger pelvic fins are in the denominator of the ratio above). Below are the results, including the text from a post on the same matter I created on Facebook. When you examine the numbers, the sexed male and the "unsexed but likely" male fish both have smaller ratios than either the sexed female or the "unsexed but likely female," and for both gender pairs (male or female) the two specimens that "might" be the same sex have about the same ratio

We should never try to do statistical comparisons on an "N of 1" but in this case I thought I'd play with the idea that the pelvic fin lengths differ between genders. The yellow column shows the ratio of pectoral spine length to pelvic spine length (each measured as a straight line) for all four fish. The first fish is the definite male. The second fish is the definite female (unfortunately only one pelvic fin is visible). The third fish is unsexed (top fish in the photo), possibly a female. The fourth fish is also unsexed (bottom fish in the photo), possibly male. IF the sexes of the two unsexed fish are correct, then yes, these two males have longer (visible) pelvic fins than do females. Both "males" have an average pectoral fin length to pelvic fin length ratio less than 1.5, and both "females" have an average value >1.5. Don't make too much of this, and please don't call me out on my interpretation. (1) I've already stated we shouldn't trust an "N of 1" (i.e., the number of definite males and definite females), (2) I'm not publishing this, and (3) maybe the difference is just an artifact: perhaps the pelvic fins "look" shorter on females because a portion of the fins is hidden by the increased girth of the females. Of course, if either of the unsexed fish are mis-ID'd for gender, then this all washes out and we see no differences whatsoever. LOL Cheers, Eric

[Jobro]

Pretty interesting work there. TBH with pure eyesight I can hardly see a difference in Pelvics

Too bad there is no picture of the second female from a more straight downward shot.
I guess no differences were to be seen on the vents neither?

[bekateen]

Previous photos of the vents were rather inconclusive, but I thought there might be some differences. I have pics of the vents of just the biggest male and female, but I couldn't see anything convincing me. I'll post them later.

Cheers, Eric

[stuby]

Hi All, As mentioned above, it was brought to my attention that the male H. guahiborum might have larger (relatively speaking) pelvic fins than do females of the same species.

I have four fish to examine from the above photos - 1 male, 1 female, and 2 uncertain, but quite likely (based on body shape hints) another male and female (but maybe two subordinate males). So I took the time to use the dorsal view images of all four fish to measure the pixel sizes of the visible portions of the pectoral and pelvic fins of each specimen, then convert these to millimeters and express the results as a ratio of Pectoral spine length / Pelvic spine length. The idea of this ratio is that if the pelvic fins are bigger on males than on females, we would expect the ratio to be smaller in males (because the larger pelvic fins are in the denominator of the ratio above). Below are the results, including the text from a post on the same matter I created on Facebook. When you examine the numbers, the sexed male and the "unsexed but likely" male fish both have smaller ratios than either the sexed female or the "unsexed but likely female," and for both gender pairs (male or female) the two specimens that "might" be the same sex have about the same ratio

This is true in many plecs..... not all mind you but it is a good guide at least. This works well in sexing Hypancistrus, Peckoltia, and a few more that I have noticed anyways. I tell people that are new to sexing them to look for this as I think it is easier way for them than trying to sex them by body shape, head shape, ect.

Chuck

[bekateen]

Thanks Chuck. Indeed yes; I just wasn't expecting it in these fish. And it is pretty subtle in my photos and it is in need of confirmation through better pics (ventral views so none of the fins are hidden along their lengths).

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

Hi All,

Here's an update on my

Hemiancistrus guahiborum

. Still no signs of spawning, but at least the dominant male is growing well. In the last 16 months, He's grown to about 10.2cm SL, more than 1.5cm longer than my last measurement! There's also one female that is distinctly large, but not as large as the male and I didn't measure her to confirm SL. The other four are significantly smaller in size. I couldn't tell if it was real or my imagination, but the pelvic fins of the big male seemed disproportionately long.... and orange in color. He also had really big pectoral and opercular odontodes.

I rearranged their tank today and added a large WC, about 75% distilled water and 25% tap water.

Hopefully something happens, but at least for now I'm really impressed with their growth and health.

Cheers, Eric

[bekateen]

More pics

[stuby]

Mine have been acting like they want to breed..... and the biggest male is impressive. I haven't measured them, I should have just didn't think of it when I moved them the other day. I will try and get some measurements and pictures in a few days so we can compare our finding.

Chuck