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I have purchased two plecos that were sold to me as an panaque maccus clown pleco but I am unsure because they look so different then one of my clown plecos I had prior. I am thinking they are L340 Mega Clown Pleco and help will be greatly appreciated.

takin them out and placing them in a container will give you a better pic for id. I usually take a good one from above.

Definitely not a Panaque Maccus. More like some kind of a Hypan to me. Better pics would help. Take a shot of its mouth to see the teeth.

Hi,

it is a Hypancistrus from Xingu, definetely not P. maccus or L 340.
Might turn out as L 400. In this case just wait for a good oportunity to take a pic of the fish inside the tank, because even a perfect picture is not necessarily enough for a sure ID.

edi: Teeth don't help to id the species.

Here is some more pictures

More pics

I certainly disagree that reference to teeth "don't help" in identification. For a non-expert like myself, it does help. Perhaps some here are just so good at identification that they can just eyeball a fish and arrive at a definite conclusion. Good for them!
Anyway, what you got there is definitely a Hypan based on the recent pics. But pretty hard to determine which one for a non-expert like myself because there's so many Hypans out there with that kind of pattern. Let's just wait for our resident experts to weigh in on this.

tagamasid1023 wrote:I certainly disagree that reference to teeth "don't help" in identification.

I think you misunderstand. Teeth don't help in species indentification, they do however allow you to ID to genus level. So teeth helps us say this is Leporacanthicus, but they tell us nothing about which species. I think that's what Daniel was saying, apologies if I've got this wrong.



Jools

It just amazes me that a fish pet store would sell a fish which is not even the fish they claim it to be. I knew it wasn't a clown pleco when I purchased them. I wonder if they are wood eaters because I did purchase several driftwood for them. I have one clown so if they aren't much wood eaters then looks like my sole clown will have a buffet line of wood for him to rasp on. They don't seem to come out much only a few inches around the driftwood pile and that's it.

Hi,

Jools got it right, I was only talking about this fish in particular. Of course teeth are very useful for an ID on genus level, and sometimes even on species level - like it is in H. debilittera and L 340.

But this is a wormlined Hypancistrus from Xingu, and teeth don't help. Hypancistrus are mostly carnivorous, and no wood eaters.
The new pics don't allow a proper ID neither, observe it and compare to the pictures in the database, start with L 400.

I agree with everyone that this is some type of wormline Hypancistrus.

These guys are not wood eaters but are omnivores and will eat a variety of meaty and plant foods. I keep two wormline species (L333 and L66) and they eat shrimp pellets, blackworms, algae wafers, and the occasional cucumber.

I wouldn't be too harsh on your lfs. Many fish are hard to identify and often come in mislabeled from the supplier. In this case you are on the winning end as Hypancistrus are much more valuable fish than Panaque maccus. If you don't want it you could probably sell it through your local fish club or on Aquabid for 3-4x what a Panaque maccuscosts.

Andy

I like them they are pretty Kool looking. actually looking to get more. I only paid 6.99 for each and that prolly is a steal.

Thanks everyone for taking time to help out identifying this plecos.

Maybe we should start using the right genus for the species maccus here, which is Panaqolus and not Panaque. Finally even science accepted the genus.

Sorry for butchering the name. Never was good at scientific names.

Some more pictures.