i bought this spotted plec being sold as chocolate...

[todd]

hi i bought a white spotted pleco that the store claimed was a chocolate plec. i have had him for over 6months and he is still only 3 inches long. hes black with white spots and white tirangle spots on his dorsal and anal fins. after looking on this site i think he might be a L373. any thoughts would be helpful.
thank you,todd

[The.Dark.One]

Hi

It looks like an Ancistrus sp to me

[macvsog23]

Hi

It looks like an Ancistrus sp to me

It is poss Sp 3?

[MatsP]

What was called "sp 3" on this website for several years is now (since a couple of years) called

Ancistrus cf_cirrhosus

, and yes, it looks very much like one of those. There are others that look similar, but it seems likely.

--
Mats

[todd]

hi thanks for the replies! i thought the same thing but he dosent have the bristlnose..mabye he is a she?

[MatsP]

It's probably a she, yes. If the fish is bigger than about 6cm/2.5", I'd say it's almost certainly a female. If it's smaller, you'd have to let it grow a bit.

--
Mats

[todd]

i did some more looking and thatpetplace.com is selling one that looks like mine. they are claiming thiers is a L149. does this sound like the right L#? i see there isnt a pic here for the L-149 here. should i submit it for this site?

[racoll]

Hi.

Looks like a regular, common bristlenose pleco (

Ancistrus cf_cirrhosus

) to me.

There's a very remote chance it could be L149, but you could only be sure of that if you knew which river it was wild-caught from.

[macvsog23]

Sadly this "Miss Selling" is all too common now days in the fish trade.
It is not surprising considering the amount of excitement generated over L Numbers.
I work on a Sunday in a LFS and selling any Pleco with out either an L Number or the word Zeb in the name is almost impossible.
I think I must spend over and hour every Sunday explaining that L numbers are just that, numbers a form of sudo scientific identification meant to make cataloguing easy and that more fish don’t have L numbers than do.
Customers demanding I “sell an L Number pleco" after being told the species is described in 1740 and thus has no need of an L Number.

So far I have seem
"False Empire Zeb plecos"
"Imperial spotted zeb plecos"
“Royal Imperial false striped zeb plecos"
The list goes on.
I once had a very educated and what seemed intelligent person who would be best described as a sudo scientist. claming to be totally aware of the L number system prattling on about L Numbers and boring me to death, when asked what fish he had he produced photos of the most bland and uninteresting plecos I have ever seen but rattled of an astounding range of L numbers and fancy names with the word Zeb scattered across the conversation.
Total bunkum and twaddle then he started quoting prices he had paid and it was amazing. One year later he is now an "expert on reptiles" and buying any lizard he can. He informed me that L numbers were far too hard to keep and he has sold all of his at a loss. With people like that the shops will sell any old junk to people and new entrants to the hobby will be ripped off as was the poster of this post.

[todd]

hi i enjoyed reading your post macvsog. but i wouldnt say i was ripped off.missled yes,but this plec is the coolest plec i have. i hope to get more like her which is why i wanted to find out what she was.i agree the kids selling, in the stores around, me dont konw any more than what the box they bought them in says. i bought her because i saw her and not because i thought she was a chocolate.

have a good one

[macvsog23]

OK

[racoll]

new entrants to the hobby will be ripped off as was the poster of this post.

I think todd was only ripped off if, a) the fish cost a lot more than the going rate for this species, and b) that this was a deliberate action by the LFS (which in most cases, it probably isn't, as they generally know next to nothing about the fishes they sell).

[JoePlec]

new entrants to the hobby will be ripped off as was the poster of this post.

I think todd was only ripped off if, a) the fish cost a lot more than the going rate for this species, and b) that this was a deliberate action by the LFS (which in most cases, it probably isn't, as they generally know next to nothing about the fishes they sell).

Too true.. what gets me is they dont know the L number but they can reel the price of instantly haha

[MatsP]

Too true.. what gets me is they dont know the L number but they can reel the price of instantly haha

Ehm, I've seen shops where the staff have to be told "That's <pointing to lable> this one". And I suspect that if it says "Chocolate pleco" on the label, you'll get whatever brown fish there is in the tank...

--
Mats

[macvsog23]

I worked in an LFS within a large garden centre in the UK.
Every day a staff meeting is conducted and the staff were told the sales they should achieve and that they should push a certain product due to the extremely good profit margins
One day it was Plecos and how wonderful they were
The manager told us to sell a pleco with every tank because they keep that green slim away.
Naturally after explaining his problem I left.
But please don’t blame the poor kid in the shop he or she is just making a few bucks and gets crap every day from idiots who buy a fish and then can’t keep it alive.
Look at it this on this site people ask and accept in the shop if they ask they then argue.

[JoePlec]

I worked in an LFS within a large garden centre in the UK.
Every day a staff meeting is conducted and the staff were told the sales they should achieve and that they should push a certain product due to the extremely good profit margins
One day it was Plecos and how wonderful they were
The manager told us to sell a pleco with every tank because they keep that green slim away.
Naturally after explaining his problem I left.
But please don’t blame the poor kid in the shop he or she is just making a few bucks and gets crap every day from idiots who buy a fish and then can’t keep it alive.
Look at it this on this site people ask and accept in the shop if they ask they then argue.

Dont really agree.. Its like Asda selling a tin of beans as a tin of coffee at coffee prices.. If people want to sell fish they need to know what they are selling end of. If i sell u a 6k car for the price of a 24k car would you be happy? To sum up it IS their fault. But i do agree with them trying to make money.. They are a shop they have to, but at least sell it with the right name and number.

[macvsog23]

I am not justifing it just saying be real about the staff and focus on the shop and the owners.

[Bas Pels]

That is quite often the case: those who you see, who tell you the bad things are not the one who decide what happens

I tell them I do realize they did not make up the thing themselves, but I do complain

In order to get my point mentioned in the staff meeting

[macvsog23]

That is quite often the case: those who you see, who tell you the bad things are not the one who decide what happens

I tell them I do realize they did not make up the thing themselves, but I do complain

In order to get my point mentioned in the staff meeting

Thats the way to do it mr Punch

[JoePlec]

That is quite often the case: those who you see, who tell you the bad things are not the one who decide what happens

I tell them I do realize they did not make up the thing themselves, but I do complain

In order to get my point mentioned in the staff meeting

Although i do agree with this. Maybe the problem lays with the industry. I do believe its not a shops "fault" but on the other hand if i had a sweet shop i would not sell sweets i knew nothing about.

[MatsP]

It's a complicated matter of the chain all the way from the exporter to the individual serving the customer. Some shops clearly have staff with a deep knowledge - some shops hire those who prefer to sell fish rather than flip burgers, other shops have higher levels of staff standards.

And it's also a case of "does the staff know how to deal with 'don't know' situations?" - this is clearly an education issue, and one that requires the management to define the procedure when a particular member of staff don't know something. Is the staff supposed to GUESS, or some such, or go ask a more experienced member of staff? Good shops certainly should have the latter policy. If I'm at Pier, I don't would much prefer Neil to help me with sexing Loricariidae than some other member of staff. Because I believe he knows his stuff. I sometimes know myself, but sometimes not. If I go to my truly Local FS, I'm probably the one telling the staff which fish I want, rather than asking their advice...

Remember, shops often have a large selection of OTHER fish as well, and it's quite tough to know everything about all manner of types of fish, including plecos, tetras, cichlids, barbs, live bearers, never mind marine and cold-water species.

--
Mats