What kind of Hypancistrus? L173 fry update

[HaakonH]

I will repeat what I have said before. When or if you are lucky enough to come across specimens of L173 which definately are wild caught, they are always encountered as one-offs or only very few individuals. If L173 was a pure, easily defined species in the wild, we would probably see more of them with similar pattern offered at once.

Most likely, the siblings of those unusually nice L173 are found right there in the same spot. But, they are discarded or sold as something different because they don't match what we like to define as L173, like H.sp."Lower Xingu" and such. So when these nice L173 breed in our tanks, we see the true (messy) genetics they carry.

Like many other fishes, even L173 can be selectively bred for generations in a closed environment, gradually increasing the amount of white and fine-tuning their pattern. This has been done, at least in Germany. The less striking siblings of these are what we know as L173b.

Wild L173 are found in the Xingu melting pot around Belo Monte. They share their habitat with many other Hypancistrus varieties. L173 is to the best of my knowledge never found as the only Hypancistrus species at any location (unless everything around Belo Monte is one or two species). This makes it less likely that it is a pure species like L174 or H.zebra, which are even found alone at certain sites.

L173 may be a species 'in the making' by nature. This means that it doesn't yet carry pure enough genes to produce 100% identical copies of the parents. But by using a pair of wild adults looking as similar to L173 as possible, one could probably create some kind of defineable strain over time.

I think wild L173 may vary a lot depending on which genes they carry. This is because of all the different Hypancistrus forms occuring in the same area; imagine all the possible combinations. Obviously we take most notice of those individuals where the H.zebra similarity shines through.

To separate L173 from H.zebra is not that hard. H.zebra has silvery eyes, L173 has darker, brownish eyes. L173 grows bigger and more robust, and the pattern is usually more wavy, dotted and broken than H.zebra. Certainly, there will be some exceptions which are very difficult to separate, but it will still be possible, at least when they're full grown.

L173.de shows fish with so much similarity to H.zebra that it gives room for thought. Some of the individuals depicted there have zebra traits that L173 don't have (such as eye colour).

Haakon

[Janne]

This is an adult male from L 173.de. Hybrid or not. You could crossbreed l 400 and H. zebra for a while, but you will never get such a fish. And please remember, this specimen is around 120mm TL.

This is a crossbreed between L173 and H. zebra.

Please see picture attached of a nice L400 variant found in 2009.

I had one identical and the colour was light purple with dark markings, extremely nice Hypancistrus.

Both Erlend and Haakon is quite correct, I would also be very surprised if there are more than 5 species of Hypancistrus in Xingu... some is just nice natural hybrids.

That the nice pleco pictured above by pleco22 reached 12 cm makes me reconsider my belief that L173 are only
H. zebra variants. I have never seen any H.zebra specimens close to being 12 cm TL.

It's not true, L173 is not a variant of H. zebra but it can have some trace from it, H. zebra do reach 12cm TL.

Janne

[Unungy]

To separate L173 from H.zebra is not that hard. H.zebra has silvery eyes, L173 has darker, brownish eyes. L173 grows bigger and more robust, and the pattern is usually more wavy, dotted and broken than H.zebra. Certainly, there will be some exceptions which are very difficult to separate, but it will still be possible, at least when they're full grown.

These are also my findings on the different individuals I've found.

Things to look for:
Brownish eyes - no "white" zebra looking type.
size? Bigger then H.zebra (I've seen zebras 4" individual but 12cm TL that is 4.8" wow that is crazy Janne )
Wavy
Dotted
Broken lines
Zebra trail looking type

L173.de shows fish with so much similarity to H.zebra that it gives room for thought. Some of the individuals depicted there have zebra traits that L173 don't have (such as eye color).

How about size? They seem to be zebra size 3"? the inconsistency of their pattern (every specimen looks very different), eye color, some blown some white, head shape seems to be flatter than the H.zebra pleco "this seems to be a good thing".



I'm glad that I wasn't the only one having doubt about the existence of this specie.

[Unungy]

After so much talking, I got a little excited and took pictures of one that fits the "possible" description.


Thoughts? and if you have a guess on the gender will be great.

[Unungy]

More pics

[HaakonH]

Saul,

To me this last fish does look very much like a gravid female L173

Haakon

[jac]

Agreed, nice fish!

[Unungy]

I found one more fish that fits the L173 description.

- Brown eyes.
- Zebra looking type
- Bigger than a Zebra
- Wavy - broken lines - few dots on their bodies.

[Unungy]

I also wanted to share this unique picture.
Never seen anything like it, any thoughts are welcome.

[Unungy]

L173. Few more arrivals.