PlanetCatfish.com

Here is a group of pics of the L168â??s I have at home. The average size is around 11cm.
All the fish came in one lot and all show both colour patterns depending on their mood. When they were put into their current tank all showed the light grey spotted look and when the now stripped guys are disturbed they revert to the light colour very quickly. I have a couple of shots of the some fish showing its stripes turning into spots as the series of shots were taken.




Are these L168â??s or something else?

BM

Certainly looks like L168 to me.

Actually they are L 52. I have been hearing a lot about these from Australian aquarists as they have only recently showed up alongside a shipment of Panaque maccus. I do not know if they were legally imported from Colombia or somebody slipped them in. You can see from your photos why L 52's common name is "chameleon pleco." They come from the Rio Atabapo where they are collected alongside altum angels. They need altum angel type water parameters and quality (i.e. very warm, very soft and a pH less than 6.5).
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/lo ... /983_F.PHP
-Shane

This is were I got confused. The fish look like the pic on here for L168 due to no pics being shown of a colour form other than striped for the L052. In the aqualog book they look like the L052 and nothing like the L168 they have pics of.
They were very hard to get to eat when I got them initially. I put them in a tank with low ph and Ketapang leaves, tried all the usual foods for catfish and they wouldnâ??t touch them. We were feeding other fish brine shrimp flake so we put some in their tank and away they went, hoovering it up like made. Theyâ??ve never looked back since.

Bettamuse,
L 52 and Dekeyseria brachyura (aka L 168) may prove to be the same species or L 52 a subspecies of D. brachyura. D. brachyura comes from the upper Rio Negro and L 52 from the upper Orinoco. These two rivers are connected for part of the year via the Casiquiare canal. Another possibility is that the headwaters of the Rio Atabapo (where L 52 are collected from the trade) are literally a couple miles from the headwaters of the Rio Negro. It is possible that these systems could be interconnected at this point as well for part of the year. There are many species that inhabit both river systems with the cardinal tetra being an obvious example.
My point is that L 52 could be the same sp. or even just a subspecies or morph of D. brachyura. I have spoken with Ingo Seidel about this (he has spawned both fish.) and he believes they are different. I believe that we will have to wait for a taxonomist to look at collections from both the Negro and Orinoco and decide just how closely they are related.
Until then, remember that an L Number refers to the fish AND its place of capture. Thus L 52 belongs to specimens from the Orinoco drainage and L 168 to those from the Rio Negro (even though later studies could show them to be the same sp.) Since the specimens currently in Australia shipped out of Bogota, they are L 52. Hope that makes since.
-Shane

These guys come from Indonesia so getting the exact location of capture is a little difficult. I was relying on other peoples knowledge. So thanks for that.
I suspect there are a lot yet to be formally described and until then we will have to rely on prudent fish keeping to keep the species separated and pure.

Thanks once again for the info.

The L168, P.pulcher for us and Dekeyseris brachyuran to everyone else are the only â??plecoâ?

I hope everyone feels sorry for us poor Aussies

All of a sudden we have this fantastic influx of new catties (at ridiculous prices, but hey). L168s are now an allowable import - so what happens with the first shipments into the country; they arrive with a bunch of 'other' catties in the mix. L52, L168, L104, who knows!!

Now we're all confused about what we actually have
I have 2 different cats that were sold to me as L104 - one looks exactly like all the pictures and the other looks similar, but not the same (pictures have been posted here previously). They also behave differently - eating different foods, etc.

It'll probably take us years to sort out what we have, so be patient

Cheers
Steve

Ndoboi (and others),
I do not believe there are any Dekeyseria brachyura (aka L 168) in Oz. All the photos that have been sent to me from Oz are L 52 (keep in mind that L 52 MAY actually also be Dekeyseria brachyura and I am distinguishing them based on their point of collection. I am not trying to infer they are two different spp.)
This also makes sense as all the other fishes, like your Panaque maccus, that showed up recently are also Colombian. Somebody got a Colombian shipment in Oz and that backs up my feeling that the fish are L 52, a Colombian fish.
There are a couple of different small undescribed Panaque spp that come mixed in every shipment of P. maccus. Check out LDA 68 and L 147 as these two are common "hitchhikers" in P. maccus (aka L 104, L 162, LDA 22, LDA 67) shipments. This is probably why you have "two different" P. maccus... they likely are two different spp.
-Shane

Thanks for your reply Shane, you're always a great wealth of local knowledge.

It does make it sooo much easier to work out what they are if you know where they come from and you certainly have your finger on the pulse over there.

I tried to find out off both the Australian importer and the German exporter where these particular 'P. maccus' originated from but very quickly hit a brick wall. It cant be that hard to trace shipments back to countries/collectors points of origin, surely??

I too think that they will end up being LDA68's as the patterning on the head is less defined than the other L104s I have (which did not originate with the large recent shipments, but that's another story best left off public forums...). Guess I'll have a better idea when they exceed 10cm (normal max L104).

I have moved my enquiries about the LDA68/L104 over to the the following thread so as not to get mixed up with the original L168 topic:

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... hp?t=15214

Cheers
Steve

ndoboi wrote:I tried to find out off both the Australian importer and the German exporter where these particular 'P. maccus' originated from but very quickly hit a brick wall. It cant be that hard to trace shipments back to countries/collectors points of origin, surely??
Cheers
Steve

Steve,

It all depends on the importer. They may have reasons why they don't keep track of where a particular fish came from: For example, if they have two shipments of (supposedly same) fish come in from different exporters [as I expect they do[1]], they may well mix those shipments together in the holding tank [after any quarantine of course]. So now you've got three dozen fish from two different exporters - possibly from different countries. Further, I wouldn't be surprised if the exporters sometimes buy fish "across the border".

Then there's obviously the reason that the importer/exporter just can't be bothered to answer questions about a fish that was sold several weeks (months) ago to a wholesaler in Australia, and the importer/exporter made a whole US$2 for those three fish you're asking about...

[1] I'm pretty sure exporters have various minimum order quantities and such-like, and, if so, sometimes an importer will buy extra boxes of "less expensive" fish to pad out the order. Just like if I'm ordering some pipes from http://www.screwfix.co.uk, and it comes to GBP 40.93, I'll buy a few boxes of screws or something to pad out my order to get over the 45.00 limit for "free P&P".

--
Mats

Mats (and others),
The importer certainly made alot more than $2.00 in Australia where even normally inexpensive fishes sell for a fortune. L 52 is US $ 1-3.00 wholesale (depending on the season) in Bogota and can sell in Australia for Aus $100. I would remember those kind of profits! I think it has a lot more to do with nobody wanting to be held accountable for breaking the law.
I believe Australia allows the import of "Peckoltia pulcher" and the importers are circumventing the law by bringing in everything from L 52 to Panaque maccus as "Peckoltia pulcher."
-Shane [/i]

At the defence of some of the importers, itâ??s not always a deliberate attempt to circumvent the laws and bring in similar species to the allowable imports. The importer here just goes off the stock/price list of the overseas wholesaler and gets what is sent. If they order Peckoltia pulcher they just have to trust that what their getting. Sometimes itâ??s a bonus of much larger fish then expected and other times itâ??s a major disappointment. The fish are checked by AQIS and if any non allowable fish are found then they are destroyed. Itâ??s up to the AQIS officer to work out the difference as most of the importers donâ??t know themselves until the fish are happy and colour up properly and sometimes not even then, and that's never going to happen in quarantine. As we have seen, itâ??s hard to tell at the best of times between some of these and near impossible for officers that can only go off pictures that look nothing like the very unhappy fish in the bags at the airport.

BM

Hi All

This thread has been very interesting to read. I've got 6 L104's and 4 L168's and at times have been more than a little confused. The more people i asked the more i seemed to get different answers and yes these little plec's are sooooooooo expensive to buy here. I've even seen what are supposed to be L002's in a shop in the last week.

In the end i dont really mind which types my fish end up being, i love them anyway, but it would be nice to know for sure what they are. The clowns are finally starting to come out of their shells and i'm seeing them eating out in the open rather than hiding so much and the butterflys seem to be happy but there is one thing that still confuses me.

The first 168 i got settled in really really well, he coloured up within minutes of the bag being floated and started eating with the other fish with out any problems. However, the other three that i got have stayed mostly dark in their colouring. I have them on a dark brown substrate and other than being much darker most of the time than the first one they seem to be doing really well. The big male seems to stay dark alot more than the others. Any input would be greatly appreciated as i want to do the right thing by my fish. If there are any other pleco nuts in Oz that would like to be in contact on msn or email that would be great. I'm in bris and i'm always looking for pleco people to chat with.
Thanks for your time.

I think L168 and L52 have different head sizes (IIRC interobital width, but I am not certain I remember this for sure) and that was another reason for keeping them apart.

Jools

G'day Plattygirl

Are you sure they're L104s and not LDA68s?? I have both and they're quite different. Can I ask where in Brissy you got them from?

Cheers
Steve

I had a look at the lda68's here on the site and i'm pretty sure i've got the L104's as yes they are quite different. I got them from two different places. Can give u specific details if you want them. Mainly i was confused as why the 2nd lot of butterflys didnt stay consistent in their colouring.

Both L168's and L052's are in Oz .... the two major importers buy off Asian wholesalers and have imported fish collected in both Columbia and Brazil.
The 104's came in as 168's on the first Columbian shipment only.