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Not too long ago I was asked to take possession of 11 Hypancistrus for the purpose of trying to spawn them. I would not own the fish, but half of any offspring that might result would mine. These fish were purported to be L173. When they arrived at the airport I picked them up at about 1 am and by the time I got home all I wanted to do was insure they were OK and, if so, get them into their tank and go to bed. So all I did was a cursory examination as they went into the tank.

Nine of the fish sure looked like 173s as shown on this site, but two did not. One looked to be a variation of a zebra which had way more white than black, The other had a mottled appearance, there were no solid stripes on it, only dashes and dots. My best guess on this was some sort of morph of either a zebras or an L236.

Tonight while cleaning the tank the fish became active and I was able to get some pictures. there are a number of what I believe are 173 and the unusualy white zebra. the "spotted" fish never came out. So without further ado, here are pictures for your consideration.

'White zebra"- this fish is about 2.5 inches TL



Assorted 173- these fish are all in the range of 3 inches (+/- 1/3 inch).

Nice looking fish. Thanks for sharing!

Are those supposed to be wild caughts from the same source? Or are they tank bred?

Very nice hyps
Best luck with the breeding!

Will you add the white zebra to your tank of zebras?

awesome! What is the sex ratio you received?

I am not sure where I will put the white zebra as well as the spotted one I did not get pics of yet. The fish do not belong to me, so I would have to have permission to put those 2 oddballs into a different tank.

I did not sex the fish, but was told by the person who sent them to me that there were 3 or 4 fms at least. I see some similarity between these fish and a few of the 173b I got years back.

Perhaps what was most interesting is how drastically different the 173s appear when stressed vs when settled in, they almost look like totally different species.

I was told the fish, at least the 173s, were wild caught, but I cannot confirm this. They are mature fish and would have arrived in country several years ago if they are indeed wild.

I heard some zebra offspring would look like L173s, maybe some L173 offspring looks like zebras as well? Though his tail fin looks definitely like Zebra and not like L173.
You should not breed them with the Zerba among them. Already too many "L173" Hybrids are going around these days. No need to create any more or identification will get even harder in the future.

Its time to update this thread. First, I returned the zebra to its owner. However, the smallest fish which I thought might have been an L236 grew and changed its appearance to be very similar to the others so I held onto it. Both the zebra and this other fish were much smaller than the other nine L173s

But I have an issue with these fish. None of them cave. I have always been pretty good at sexing adult Hypans nearing or at sexual maturity based on their behavior. I have had the above fish for 6 months now and none of them has claimed a cave. The tanks has 10 assorted shaped and sized caves (sizes are all appropriate) and there are 10 fish in the tank. I would have thought with 10 assorted fish purportedly collected from the same area, but over several years, there should be way more males than females. I should have at least a couple of males.

I think the time has come to take apart the tank and pull the fish one by one to get pictures of them from above, the side and below in cooler water to vent them. I have told the person who entrusted the fish to my care to try to spawn them that I believe they appear to be all females. Usually the problem is the reverse. So far, of the 5 different Hypans I keep (6 if one believes 173 and 173b are different fish), all have spawned, some through more than one generation. So I do not believe I am doing something wrong in how the 173 are being kept. I would note that this tank is the same one in which the heater malfunction boiled my breeding group of l236 and about 15-20 of their offspring. (This tank now has a temperature controller on it.) I cleaned it up, recycled the tank fishlessly and the 173s went in. The only change in this tank is, because the 173 are bigger than the 236, the caves are a bit larger.

nice fish thanks for sharing them

The 173s indeed look genuine 173
But to me, unfortunately mostly look males based on the pictures shown, despite them not caving as you reported.

Any new updates on their pictures?
Thanks

Until I pull them into a photo tank, there will be no decent pictures. I will get to this eventually because I need to sex them for sure. But in all the years I have kept Hypan groups, I have never had 0 cave. These have not caved since early last October when they arrived.

Edited to add this: Not only have they not caved, but if this were a tank full of males, I would expect some fighting to be going on. But I have never noticed a fish with the normal scrapes and discoloration such fights cause.

I have posted about these fish in some other threads I started since the last post here until now. Just for the sake of resolving some things here is followup. The tank appears to be female heavy. I have had two or possible three males spawning. The alpha is always in the same cave. However, the other spawn is always in one of two other caves. I am inclined to believe the #2 male is willing to accept either as there have been a series of spawns such that in one cave are eggs/new wigglers and in the other there are fry within a few days of going free swimming.

I have sold a grand total of 9 offspring. I am keeping 5 to watch grow as long as I can. I must have another 30 fry if I am correct. I will know soon as I will be moving the largest group to bigger quarter for the summer. I am a horrid picture taker. But I will try my best to get something usable to post. I have already moved 4 caves from my second larger group of 236. One cave had a trapping and the other 3 had dads on offspring at different stages. The goal is to produce reverse trios for sale such that all of the fish have spawned, but both males will likely not have spawned with the same female that is included.

Edited to fix spelling and grammar

It is now a few months shy of six years since I started this thread. Since the group began spawning the have produced almost 200 offspring. Covid turned off my selling fish and I have a lot to offer these days. In order to get fish ready to sell i needed to inventory everything and then move fish to selling tanks. I had three grow tanks for the offspring of the fish in this thread plus a bunch in the breeder tank. It have been a crazy few weeks catching and moving fish but I manage to take some pics of the fish from this thread last week.

I divided the tank in half and then broke down the left side to catch fish. I also took time on this half to get the pics below. Bear in mind that when this thread was stared I had 10 fish with the same zig-zag pattern you see in the pics from Nov. 2015. I also apologize again for being a lousy photographer.

Those are gorgeous! You are a heck of a breeder!

Cheers, Eric