Did you know fantastic help is an anagram of Planet Catfish? This forum is for those of you with pictures of your catfish who are looking for help identifying them. There are many here to help and a firm ID is the first step towards keeping your catfish in the best conditions.
It's almost certainly a Hypostomus in the Cochliodon group. It is, as for most species in this group, much harder to identify WHICH species. Do you have any idea which country it came from?
Yes, but identifying Hypostomus species purely on image looks-alike is not a reliable method. Knowing it's origin would help reduce the number of possible candidates.
do you have a mouth shot of this one? Where the teeth are identifyable? I´ve seen too many Hypostomus sp. exactly resembling a Cochliodon sp. from that very river to base a genus identification solely on the body shape. Teeth count, on the other hand, gives it away immediately (different feeding habits).
Simply by looking at the pictures, I would guess it´s the classical Cochliodon sp. "Paraguay", generally known as the "Red Bruno". Saying that, I don´t know whether the "Red Bruno" has a Hypostomus brother.
Cheers, Sandor
"What gets us into trouble is not what we don´t know.
It´s what we know for sure that just ain´t so."
--Mark Twain