Sold as gold spot pleco????

Freakdaddy · Post by **Freakdaddy** » 09 Mar 2006, 21:09

Cant find this fish listed anywhere, any ideas chaps?He is about 3" long and lives in that cave even though there is wood in the tank with him.

pleco_breeder · Post by **pleco_breeder** » 09 Mar 2006, 21:18

I cannot say for sure, but this looks very similar to some of the fish that I got with a L201 "Hypancistrus inspector" import. Most of the fish in the shipment showed the more common gold dots, but a few of the "nicer" ones had the red spotting on the upper part of the body. The fish will cross-breed with the standard L201. The fry, until they develop all of their black color, approximately 2 weeks after the yolk is gone, look very similar to L340. Because of that, I had at one point hypothesized that L340 will eventually be found to be a variant of Hypancistrus inspector.

Larry Vires

Freakdaddy · Post by **Freakdaddy** » 10 Mar 2006, 19:36

pleco_breeder wrote:I cannot say for sure, but this looks very similar to some of the fish that I got with a L201 "Hypancistrus inspector" import. Most of the fish in the shipment showed the more common gold dots, but a few of the "nicer" ones had the red spotting on the upper part of the body. The fish will cross-breed with the standard L201. The fry, until they develop all of their black color, approximately 2 weeks after the yolk is gone, look very similar to L340. Because of that, I had at one point hypothesized that L340 will eventually be found to be a variant of Hypancistrus inspector.

Larry Vires

Hi,I've checked out all the photo archieves on site for "Hypancistrus inspector" and am pretty sure its not one of them .Could it really be a crossbreed?I will try to get a better picture on here soon.

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 11 Mar 2006, 12:40

Sorry Larry, but what you write doesn't sound right to me. What do you mean "standard L201" or "theorized"??? L201 IS Hypancistrus inspector and that is a very variable species. How do you know it will cross breed, where is that documented?

Freakdaddy,

Without seeing the teeth it looks like Hypancistrus inspector to me, what do the teeth look like and why do you say it's not this species as it sure looks like it to me.

Jools

Freakdaddy · Post by **Freakdaddy** » 11 Mar 2006, 14:00

Jools wrote: Without seeing the teeth it looks like Hypancistrus inspector to me, what do the teeth look like and why do you say it's not this species as it sure looks like it to me.

The pics in the archive are of Brown fish with yellow spots or black fish with white spots,this is a black fish with gold spots .Do they vary that much and still be considered the same species? Anyway just hoiked him out for some more pics

YouTube · Post by **Jools** » 11 Mar 2006, 14:34

A lot of fish have this black/brown with light coloured spots colouration and it is variable even within H. inspector, so going on colouration or number of spots doesn't help with ID in this case.

However, I can see from the lower picture (just) that the fish has the reduced number of teeth in the lower jaw - a feature associated with Hypancistus.

Have a look around other pictures of species in this genus and you'll see some pictures showing what I mean.

Jools

pleco_breeder · Post by **pleco_breeder** » 11 Mar 2006, 16:41

Jools,

As to the post above, I was referring that the fish pictured has an unusual orange color to some of the spots. I do not know if it is a color form of Hypancistrus inspector, or a different species. However, I do know that the strain shown will breed with Hypancistrus inspector. I set up a breeding tanks for a total of 3 different "morphs" of fish that came in as L201 just a couple weeks after "disappearing" from the online community the last time. The Orange colored spots and the gold colored spots readily spawned and produced viable, I don't know if the F1 were fertile, fry. The third strain, with more and slightly smaller spots, would spawn with the standard strain, but the eggs were never fertile. First documentation, this post.

Larry Vires

racoll · Post by **racoll** » 11 Mar 2006, 17:10

This fish looks similar to the photo of L102 in DATZ, but seems to be lacking the darker margin to the dorsal and caudal fin of this "species".

Could you confirm if your fish has this or not?

It is a male though. No doubt about that

Post by **Shane** » 11 Mar 2006, 17:39

The pics in the archive are of Brown fish with yellow spots or black fish with white spots,this is a black fish with gold spots. Do they vary that much and still be considered the same species?

Absolutely. Coloration is often a poor feature to use (esp. with loricariids) for identification purposes as many fish change colors based on mood, substrate, lighting, and water conditions. There are also many fish (once again loricariids among them) that change patterns and coloration as they mature. Finally, very few studies are done in ichthyology on range and natural physical variations among a species within its range.

Descriptions are based on a single specimen from a single location, the holotype, instead of a system of averages from specimens collected throughout the water system where the fish is found.

This same thing happens with the L Number system. One photo of one fish becomes "L XXX." How do we know that the fish in Aqualog or DATZ is at all a good "representative" of its species? As an example, if you had a book that said "Homo sapiens" with a photo of a Kalahari bushman you would be sure that your tall, fair-haired humans collected in Sweden were certainly an altogether different sp. At the risk of sounding like a lumper, I think we sometimes do not see the forest through the trees.

Back to the topic at hand, I have seen literally thousands and thousands of H. inspector in Venezuela and Colombia and, as Jools pointed out, it is an extremely variable fish. Not only in coloration, but the size of the light colored spots can also vary from small to quite large.
-Shane

racoll · Post by **racoll** » 11 Mar 2006, 17:58

This fish looks similar to the photo of L102 in DATZ

I'll just clarify that I don't think it is L102, but it's good to eliminate all options.

I agree that it is most likely to be H.inspector.

There are 27 photos of H.inspector in Aqualog All L-numbers that illustrate Jools and Shanes point perfectly. Many of these have gold spots.

I have seen H.inspector myself in the LFS with gold spots.