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I am moving my L204 today and when I caught them it seemed as if I had two different species. Some seem dotted now but they didn't use to be. Before I put them back into their new tank together I thought I'd get your opinions.

One of the spotted


A spotted one plus a lined one


If you don't think they are the same species what do you think they are. Thanks.

The fish with stripes probably is L204. The other is, I suspect, .

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Mats

It is difficult to tell but i think of and not .

i am trying to dig up some pics of my old group of in which none of the fish had even a single stripe....In your case the fish has visible stripes at least in the tail which is not the case for .

Anyway there are "the Striped", "the Spotted" and "the between".....

I've kept Panaque albomaculatus before and it's not those. They used to have stripes but have faded away to dots. If you look at the tail area you can still see some stripes right before the claudal fin.

The bars on do break up with age into spots, but this guy seems really spotty.

Could be "normal" variation, might even be a different species. Not sure.

There will be bias in the ornamental trade with the specimens that are collected, so we might not see full variation.

Doesn't look like though, as these shouldn't have any bars on body or fins.

I would go with L204 for the ID, but best not try to breed from him, just in case.

Get ashot in water from side, ( it may be stressed from being out of tank ) it is quite normal for most stripes to fade as they mature a stripe stays more in fins than body, dots are quite normal.

Here in Holland the like to call this color variation L204a I think it is even published in the aqualog as L204a...
I think it is a L204 but with a slightly different pattern. Nice looking tho

Thanks for all the help.

I have an AquaLog All L#'s with out the supplements and there are no L204A but there are some pics of L204 that look identical to mine. Maybe in a supplement they added L204a. So do you feel I should separate the spotted ones or do I wait to see if the lined ones loose all their lines as well?