PlanetCatfish.com

About a year ago I bought 3 little brown BN at a LFS. They were just sold as BN, nothing special. I really enjoy them. They are the reason I joined this forum and decided to learn about them in depth.

From very early on I realized they didn't really look consistent with one another. Not knowing how wide the normal variation is in the ordinary aquarium strain BN, I just noted it and went on from there.

Now, after looking though the Cat-e-log, ScotCat and all the good identification photos I can find, one male is a very typical A. cf cirrhosus, and the other two, a male and female look just like the photos of A.temminkii.

Could I really have an A. cf cirrhosus and two A. cf temminkii from a mixed shipment to the LFS or is the variation within the common aquarium strain BN so wide that it frequently throws what appear to be different types in the same batch?

It's very possible to have shipments of more than one species mixed together. However, just to be sure, could you post pictures?

It is perfectly possible that there are mixed species in a tank. I find it very unlikely that it's , as fish from the region where A. temminckii comes from are extremely rare, and if they really are that, I'm sure someone with enough knowledge would have put a proper price-tag to match their rarity and wild-caught status (sort of $20-50 rather than $5-10 - I'm not saying that it would be Hypancistrus zebra prices, but certainly a fair bit higher).

Note also that what is often pictured [on other web-sites] as A. temminckii is actually A. cf_cirrhosus. Based on that, I'd personally say that it's highly likely that they are A. cf_cirrhosus - they can look a little bit different depending on who bred them, for example.

A photo of the fishes would make it more likely that we can identify them (but bear in mind that lots of Ancistrus species are hard to tell apart without very detailed study and knowledge of their origin [as in the river in South America, not the shop/wholesaler/breeder]).

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Mats

I am trying to get some decent photos, tried to this morning but the little buggers swam away when they saw me.
I'm not saying that they are temminkii, just that they look more like those photos than the photos listed under cirrhosus. Part of the problem is that I don't know how wide the normal variation in the common BN is as understandably most ID photos show the typical individual rather than the extremes.