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Ancistrus sp 5?

Posted: 14 Apr 2006, 05:58
by Scorpi-O
I noticed a green algae problem starting up in our Swordtail fry grow-out tank. I was gonna see about a few otto's, but they didn't have any at our local Big Al's. The gold SAE's didn't look all the great and most of the other pleco's wouldn't be right for a fry tank.
The manager gave me a good deal on a pair of really small Ancistrus type plecos. So now we've got a couple more Ancistrus besides our original.

We now have:
Our original common Bristle-Nose Ancistrus sp.(3). Sweeper's about 3.5" now with lots of bristles. He's in the same tank as our L190 Royal, a BGK, a Senegal Bichir, 3 Clown Loaches and a pair of Vampire Shrimp.

The new ones are in our fry tank:
1 - 1.5" Golden Bristle-Nose Pleco. If I'm not mistaken, it's an Ancistrus sp.(4)
For that one, I found:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/lo ... ru/5_F.PHP

The other was called a 1.5" Long-Fin Lace Pleco. There's so many different common names given to these type of fish. There's no reference to such a pleco in the Cat-eLog. It looks very much like our "Sweeper", but without the facial tentacles. (It's a little too small to start showing it's bristles anyway.)
It has the same small spots covering it's body, it even has the white tabs on the corners of the caudal fin. The fins have spots in rows like an A.sp.(3), but the pectoral & Caudal fins are double the normal length.
Could it be an Ancistrus sp.(5)?
There's zippity-do-dah about them.
I've read the Shanes World page on the Ancistrus type.
http://www.planetcatfish.com/shanesworld/314.PHP

Lights on that tank are off right now, so I can't get pics of the 2 of them. I'll try to get some tomorrow & post them in this thread.

Update - pics

Posted: 14 Apr 2006, 23:45
by Scorpi-O
The promised pics
Here's the "Golden Bristle-Nose" or so it was labled. It's in good shape and it's fallin in to algae clean up duty as soon as I put it in the tank.
Ancistrus sp.(4)
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/albu ... pic_id=525

and these are what I think is the Ancistrus sp(5).
Side View
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/albu ... pic_id=529
Side View but closer,
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/albu ... pic_id=528
Tail View
http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/albu ... pic_id=527
The tears in it's fins are pretty bad, but it should recover shortly. :D
Those Yoyo Loaches the store put in with them were crazy :twisted: and bugged all the plecos in the tank.

Posted: 19 Apr 2006, 11:27
by MatsP
Yes, you've got an Albino and Long-fin (veiltail) variety of "common bristlenose". At least, I believe they are variations of the same species - unplanned crossing between mother and son in my big tank shows that there is latent albinism in those: about a quarter of my fry from that spawn was albino.

[Although there is a possibility that not ALL albino's are the same species - if it's not easy to tell them apart WITH colour, they are certainly not getting any easier with most of the colour taken away!]

I haven't bred long-fins, but I'm pretty sure they are the same species as well.

Now if we just could get some scientist to figure out what our Ancistrus species is...

--
Mats