PlanetCatfish.com

Hi, I have had this pleco for about 6 months. I bought it as a "Royal Pleco" of undetermined species. It was mostly black with colour on the tail, dorsal and pectoral fins. The colour has changed and the attached pic is currently what he/she? looks like. Eating wood, hikari wafers and zucchini at the moment. I had the fish in a 100gal with other tank mates but it was being pestered by some other fish. It was consuming a lot of wood in that tank. I'm concerned that it is malnourished but it seems to have a fairly plump belly. I was thinking it might be some type of Mango pleco or close species.

Any help is much appreciated!

It's a color variant of one of the species. Not sure which one.

Hi,

a picture of the teeth would help to narrow it down, there is the P. nigrolineatus complex with reduced number of teeth (less than 10 per side of a jaw) which are arranged more or less in a V form. These species originate from white water streams.

The second complex around P. armbrusteri has considerably more teeth and comes from the big clear water streams of Brasil.

The yellowish colour sometimes appears in some pleco species and disappears again.

Cheers,

Thanks for taking the time to look at my fish. Here is a closeup of the mouth.

...I think it's L191? Main assumption is only off of how commonly L191 is sold as an unspecified Royal Pleco.

They are right that this yellow color comes and goes on loricariids rarely and randomly for unknown reasons. See for a species that it happens more often in. We've had a thread going where we tried to collect records.