Did you know fantastic help is an anagram of Planet Catfish? This forum is for those of you with pictures of your catfish who are looking for help identifying them. There are many here to help and a firm ID is the first step towards keeping your catfish in the best conditions.
I recently bought these two fishes as ancistrus dolichopterus, but I doubt if they are anc. dolichopterus. Who can tell me as well if they both are male? I bought them as male and female.:
Females can definitely develop bristles around the lip, they just won't have them up the center of their face. They tend to develop them as they mature if they're going to get them at all. I would say these are probably Ancistrus triradiatus. It's hard to tell without their fins up, but they certainly resemble my A. triradiatus male:
They will show definite stripes in their finnage, along with this color pattern.
Thank you all. The man at the shop said the first was a female, but he seems to be wrong about the species. Is it possible I have two different species and if so, is it possible anyway to breed?
The looked like the same species to me, at least in the pictures. The Ancistrus are commonly mislabelled for some reason, be it due to poor picture references or people just using the "accepted" names they've always used, I'm not sure.