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Hubby and I purchased several whiptail cats last month. 5 or 6, now down to just one but the only survivor is doing well and suprisingly feeding primarily on meaty food such as thawed shrimp. The whiptails would refuse to touch any veggies, prepared or algae offered.










This is the best shot I can get of the bristlenose. I can try for more if necessary but I have a feeling an exact ID will be hard to pinpoint considering they are very young and only 1.5" long at the moment.

The first is - which species is hard to say, as there are many very similar looking species.

Second fish, I'm not going to even guess without a capture location.

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Mats

I'd guess the second one is Ancistrus sp. rio Ucayali, the younger ones are much darker and the spots appear almost silvery, with age they fade out to a dark reddish brown and the spots become less noticeable, also the red tinge on the pectoral hard rays is one identifying feature. I have a breeding pair of them, the adults look quite different to the juveniles.
Conrad

The whiptails don't look in good condition - split dorsal, tails eaten (?) away - has something been harassing them or have you got a fin-nipper or were they purchased this way?

I had guessed the whiptails would be a Rineloricaria species. They were in bad shape when we purchased them, which would explain why out of about 5 we are down to only one. None of them would eat, they all started dying off a few days apart. Now we've got the one, he's retained the most color and I think he's the one that has the yellowish tint in the photos.
He's eating pieces of thawed shrimp that we offer as he won't touch zucchini, algae wafers or pellet foods.
The bristlenoses were quite random. I would have asked for a collection location if I thought anyone in the shop would know the answer but being a frequent customer I know the usual answer is, "Oh, I'm not sure. We just order from distributer and they send this".

Whiptails in the wild sift through mud & sand to find small crustaceans, invertebrates etc hence they are eating the shrimp & avoiding zucchini.They should settle to also eat prepared food like pellets, flakes & wafers but shrimp is much more natural for them. You could try frozen bloodworm, daphnia etc as well as these should be eagerly accepted. Green foods will pretty much be ignored by whiptails although the ancistrus will lke it.