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.
I think, without further information (like the country of origin - or at least where it was exported from), you'll struggle to get any better than a "guess based on the coulur pattern", and if Janne says L009, then that's most likely right. Is there any reason you think it's NOT L009?
Whilst it's great when several people confirm that it's a particular species, I think if someone else had a "better" idea, they would have said so.
And as you say, there are pleny of Peckoltia species that are similar in pattern and colour, and they are hard to tell apart from looking at them - knowing the origin will help, but you don't, so that's not working for us in this case.
I think Mats is absolutely right in every particular, in this case. Getting a number of people to agree on the ID is okay, if there are a lot of people who can do so. Janne is very experienced and I think in this case you can just go by what he says. Other people may not feel confident enough to post on this one. I know I don't.
Very good-looking fish, BTW!
Deborah
the problem is that a few species exist with such body pattern and since intraspecificly body pattern can be subject to a lot of differences between individuals it is quite hard to give an accruate id!!