bristlenose pleco questions

[Balloon Fish]

hey everyone,
I've had a bristle nose pleco for a while and never remembered to ask you guys this question but do the female ones have bristle noses? the guy at the lfs told me they don't but i'm not too sure... also are any of yours always hiding/shy? cause i see my pleco on some leaf and when i walk by 100% of the time it stops and watches me and in less then 1 minute it swims back to behind the co2 ladder... i dont have any caves or anything at the moment but i will get one once my algae is controlled a little better...

 

[ShivaHaze]

I used to have bristle-nose pleco in my tall planted Aqurium when I was teenager. The male has a mass of alien appendages on the front of it's face like drftwood. The female resembles a regular plecostums variety. It's a nice algae eater for a smaller tank.

 

[Balloon Fish]

ok thx cause i wasn't sure if it was a bristlenose or not cause there was no bristlenoses and i can't really believe the guys at the lfs cause they always seem to tell me the wrong thing... and also my bristlenose had these white globs on the tail so i wasn't too sure

 

[phOOey]

generally the females will have either no bristles, or very small and few bristles.

 

[Stevie]

Mine has a lot of small bristles,I dont know if is male or female. It as stop to look at me when I go near the tank,and then fecks off to one of the caves. In saying that,lately it seems to be less afraid and hangs around a bit longer. My one also has white maks on the tail.

Do you ever see yours stuck yours stuck to the glass??

 

[Balloon Fish]

mine does the same exact thing and sometimes stick to the glass but thats only like for 1 or 2 minutes once i come then it runs to its hiding spot, heres a pic of mine its a big picture but thats so you can see the details (hope you guys can see it cause it always seems to mess up...)

 

[Kuroshio]

well my bristle nose is an albino, and small (only maybe 2 inches) as an adult. They tend to be shy, are nocturnal eaters, and love places to hide during the daylight or high activity. As far as the bristles, I don't know, my albinos are a bit different as is, but I like them for that. the males turn a bright orange, and the females stay a calmer pinkish/orange or so.

 

[Balloon Fish]

never seen an albino pleco before... are they weird looking?

 

[Kuroshio]

haha, no more wierd than the average pleco! Honestly I am not a big pleco fan d/t their appearance, but these guys aren't bad. too bad I don't have any pics...

their color resembles orange sherbert if that helps any (like the little dixie cups with the vanilla and orange), and they are smaller than average. Also the bristles are very unobtrusive (short).

 

[BarbN]

Here's one

 

[BarbN]

Another... dad and junior

 

[slurpor]

Oddly, the bristlenoses sold in my area do not have the tentacles on the face at all- neither sex has them. I have had 3 different bristlenoses and none of them grew bristles as adults. I think it may be because:

a). the trait is being bred out of the stock, or
b). because there are hundreds of species that are sold as ancistrus or bristlenose, and maybe some don't have prominent bristles

I have a regular bristlenose in one tank and an albino in another. The albinos in my lfs don't really have the pink or orange tinge that most do- these are more white. I have had my albino for about 6 months and figured I would have to trade him in when he outgrows the tank. So far, he has not grown one bit- he is 2" max and I feed him wafers all the time and his stomach is fat.

 

[Balloon Fish]

ooo i've seen those ablinos before, i thought they were just another kind of pleco lol i guess their albino

 

[Kuroshio]

the small size of the albino is the reason that I went with it, although a pure white one certainly sounds different and may get bigger. Mine are in my 2 10 gallon tanks, and won't to the best of my knowledge get bigger than 2-3 inches. My lfs has many, all 2-3 inches. I once found a pleco web site that had hundreds of pictures of different breeds...and the pics that BarbN posted are right on, just like mine!!

 

[Balloon Fish]

dont' know why they have so many kinds of plecos, it confuses me lol

 

[wayne]

Slurpor you are correct on point 2), except there are about 70 different species I believe. That is why it is quite possible to buy two fish from two differnet shops and never get them to breed. If you want to buy these things buy 'em all at the same time. If you worried about inbreeding them get em wild caught (quite a lot are).

Balloon fish - it's because there's lots of little local varietiees speciating at a terriffic rate, rather like Apistogramma cichlids. The age of many of these species can be measured in thousands of years.