marble bristlenose pleco

[alscats]

brought a marble bristlenose pleco of about 3" he is a beauty but after looking him up on your cat-log he looks nothing like pics wondering if you could help?
sorry about pics.

[Suckermouth]

That's not a marbled bristlenose plec, that's a normally colored bristlenose plec. Now which species is another question. You say it doesn't look like

Ancistrus cf_cirrhosus

, though? I'm not seeing anything that indicates otherwise.

[Cory_lover]

yeah i bought one of those too! Was told by LFS that its a strain of bristlenose, kinda like the albino strains of bristlenose. Curious thing is, when I bought mine, it was around 2cm and was a bright orange. But as it grew older, it darkened and looks more like your specimen now. I'm thinking its a she now cos there're no bristles and its about 5-6cm in length now.

[sunfish]

This is a calico/piebald bristlenose. This is a bred color form of

Ancistrus cf_cirrhosus

.

[PeterUK]

This is a calico/piebald bristlenose. This is a bred color form of

Ancistrus cf_cirrhosus

.

I have a few of those scattered about my tanks and they was bred from 'normal' BN like in Alscats photos.
I have found that BN can change their colouration depending on their age and what sort of decor the tank has.

Piebald animals have a patchwork of large unpigmented (sometimes expressed as white) areas and normally pigmented patches which does NOT mean small white spots like on the photos shown.

[sunfish]

This is a calico/piebald bristlenose. This is a bred color form of

Ancistrus cf_cirrhosus

.

I have a few of those scattered about my tanks and they was bred from 'normal' BN like in Alscats photos.
I have found that BN can change their colouration depending on their age and what sort of decor the tank has.

Piebald animals have a patchwork of large unpigmented (sometimes expressed as white) areas and normally pigmented patches which does NOT mean small white spots like on the photos shown.

Nope, this is not the case for the piebald/calico bristlenose. There sre two strains. One has a (more or less) bright orange body with irregular dark brown markings, shown here:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... e_id=10116
Those were also used to create the super red variety.

The other ones have orange and brown areas plus the usual lighter spots, shown here:
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/im ... ge_id=7807
And this is what alscats most likely has.