, but this is the first time I'm posting in the board.Last Sunday my wife and I found this cutest little pleco at a LFS here in Hiroshima (JP). What impressed me the most was how such a tiny pleco could be so totally relaxed in the tank...solid colors, fins wide open, merrily scraping algae around and totally oblivious to the other fish or the customers. The shop guy said it was called "Imperial Ranger Pleco" (an impressive name for a 1" fish!) but confessed he didn't know absolutely anything else about it except that it's a "new species".
I came home and did a Google search with no luck. I could find "Imperial Pleco", another commercial name for Hypancistrus zebra which it obviously isn't. No luck with "Ranger Pleco" except for someone else asking what they were on another board (no good answers) and a stock list of some shop selling "Pleco Ranger" for $4.99 (no info).
Of course we couldn't let a nice little mystery fish like this end up in some horrible home (horrible in this case meaning "not ours" LOL), so we went back there to bring it home into her tank. Here's a couple pics while it was still bagged and floating. It's pretty hard to get a good pic of such a small fish!
Anyway, if somebody recognizes the body patterns or the name, I'd love to hear about it!
