What Ancistrus is this guy??

[pinkertd]

Having never seen a Datz publication, I am just trying to understand who identified this fish in that publication. Obviously it's not a person named Datz....my bad assumption.

So much information missing on both fish....if indeed there really are 2 separate fish....I suspect we will never learn the answers to the questions we have...the answers thus far everywhere you look are speckled with assumptions, stories and opinions and maybe a myth or two here and there. I will continue to call my fish L144 for that is what people recognize from past history of others. And I will still point them to places on the internet where they can read about other peoples experiences with L144. For if I say I have ancistrus sp 4, no one will know what I am talking about and an internet search is not going to bring them to information on other people keeping ancistrus sp 4. Very confusing....but certainly not the only species that is, as you pointed out. The same confusion exists with SAE's....it seems siamensis is very rarely seen in the hobby, and langei is the SAE people should seek out.

And...to make matters even worse, I just did a google search on ancistrus sp 4 and found this:
http://www.mchportal.com/aquatic-life-m ... -sp-4.html
where it states that ancistrus sp 4 is the albino morph of sp 3.

And yet another reference made in 2005 that sp 4 is the albino of sp 3: http://www.aquariumadvice.com/forums/f2 ... 66057.html

[MatsP]

Do you know who Ingo Seidel is? He is the one that personally told us at the CSG conference that the fish pictured as sp(4) in the Cat-eLog is not the same as L144.

L-numbers are published first in DATZ (Die Aquarien und Terrarienzeitschrift- The Aquarium and Terrarium magazine), then "copied" to other media: PlanetCatfish website, Aqualog books, etc. Ingo Seidel is listed as author of the DATZ L-number special, along with Rainer Stawikowski and Andre Werner (This "L-number Special" is a book based on the magazine articles collected together).

Aqualog is a book published with L-numbers, and to the best of my identification abilities, the fish in that book is ALSO two pictures of the same fish that we have here on PlanetCatfish. The third picture looks like it's a different, but similar fish.

In a book by Ingo Seidel, "Back to Nature Guide to L-catfishes", he shows the same picture we have here for L144 (as L144) and the one we have here as sp(4) listed as "Ancistrus sp (incorrectly L144)".

Both of these books show L144 as a fairly dull, to quote Ingo "an ugly fish", where the "fake" L144 is brighter yellow, and quite a pretty fish.

Since a lot of material on the internet is copied from other internet sites [directly or indirectly], you can't always trust it unless it's copied CORRECTLY from the original source of the information - in this case, I think Ingo Seidel can be trusted to be "the original source".

And yes, I can probably be called "Personally responsible" for this change - although I informed Jools what I was doing, and he agreed that it was the correct thing to do - in fact he told me exactly what steps to take, and the only minor difference is that I altered the "first available n" in sp(n) from sp(3) [which was for a very long time used as the "common bristlenose", and you find that quite a lot on various places on the net] into sp(4).

Finally, I think it will take a very long time (if ever) before the label L144 is no longer used for the "fake" L144. But it's never been correct, and it never will be.

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Mats

[pinkertd]

I do indeed know who Ingo Seidel is, I didn't realize that he's the one who says the "fake" L144 is not the same as the L144 identified in DATZ. When someone first pointed out to me the other day that planetcatfish was changing the ID of our L144's, I needed to understand what was going on. As I said, I know there's been arguments back and forth about these fish for a very long time, but that is all I knew of it up until now. There are still a lot off questions in my mind surrounding the misidentification, the proper identification and the real origin of the ancestors of my L144 and who was involved in breeding the black eyed yellow ancistrus prior to the availabilityt of the www in 1993 and the internet in 1989. It just seems very, very odd to me that a significant accomplishment such as a the development of a yellow strain of these plecos can't be documented anywhere. Perhaps from the original L144 identified in DATZ as not such a pretty fellow, and breeding back and forth to supposedly set the color strain, that these beauties evolved. It would not be impossible, would it? Would not the looks of the original L144 change drastically since he supposedly was never bred back to any other "real" L144? Would not the resulting fishes through breeding eventually take on more characteristics of the brown ancistrus for that would be the dominant gene? In any case, there are many questions that probably will never be answered for 100% certain, and there will continue to be a lot of confusion for a long time to come as you point out. The longfin L144's that I breed are a truly magnificant, beautiful yellow fish, with no comparison in my opinion to the common brown longfins or the common albino longfins. I have sold them all over the 50 United States in the past couple of years. They are still a "hard to come by" purchase, sometimes you cannot find any on the market in the US, especialy healthy ones. I enjoy breeding them, have spent time trying to strengthen my breeding lines and am thrilled to be able to supply healthy fish to hobbyists that hopefully will continue to breed them so that they are available to future hobbyists....even if they are the "fake" L144 . I thank you Mat and Suckermouth for supplying the information you have here in quick to read postings. Some days there's just not enough time to research the background of a controversy such as this, you two shortened that up for me nicely.

Debbi

[MatsP]

As far as I know, there is only one species of long-fin Ancistrus, and that is the common one. This is one of the indications that the "original" L144 is a different species from "false" L144.

I don't know what the heritage of the "false" L144 is, but I do believe the loss of the true L144 is related to the "false" one being prettier.

Ingo just replied today that the photo is "at least 15 years old", but that as it's not a digital photo, he doesn't have a better timestamp than that. That would make it about 1995.

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Mats