PlanetCatfish.com

I started out with a single fish, that I believe is L397.
I believe it is a female by now. She got quite gravid lately.

After some searching I finally found a smaller group of fish that resembled L397. The owner stopped the hobby and did not really know what they were. They are supposed to be 4 years old. Got all 3 of them for 30€ which was a real deal.

Now these new fish, which I assumed would be L397, look a little different form my original one. I think it is just a color morph. But I would like to be sure. Any Input very appreciated.

Check out this old post: http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 22#p309453. It may be relevant.

Cheers, Eric

@jobro

I believe that all 4 fish you've posted are L397s despite the darkish orange colour. They all have the squiggly pattern on their heads and the 3 colour stripes on their fins.

They may not hv your standard L397 colours but they are L397s.

So I would assume breeding them is fine?

@Jobro

I would try to breed them if they were mine.

If the three new fish are mixed sex, then I'd just play it safe and try to breed them. Leave your one original 397 out of the mix until you can confirm the ID of your other three with greater certainty. Besides, even if these three are L397, they do look distinctive and if you breed one of them with your old female L397, the offspring might lose this unique and nice color pattern.

Just my thoughts.

@acanthicus - any thoughts?

Hi

I didn't see this earlier, sorry, only because of a link I did now.
In my opinion they are all L 397, colour is the last characteristic to look at in many or even most identification issues. It can be influenced by too many factors like nutrition, gender, age and of course the catching location, it's just not a stable trait to base an identification on.
I keep L 397 myself: I got 9 pieces from a friend and gave 5 away to another one after a year. They look different now, have different sizes and therefore also a slightly different pattern, but originate all from the same batch and looked pretty much the same when I split the group. Not as much as in the photo above I need to admit, but it's the same matter. As Eric said, the intense red colouration might vanish in potential juveniles, but it wouldn't result in hybrids.

cheers
Daniel

Thanks for the reply. I will watch them mature into spawning season and see if I have more than 1 female. Depending on the genders I might split them up to keep the red color strain pure.

Turns out the less coulored fish which I suspected was a female, is now a hairy male
Probably gonna end up with 4 males again ... My luck

The other three fish dont look very masculine ! Are they all hairy now ?

The other three had some troubles, sunken bellies... I dewormed them. I am still trying to get them back up into shape. So far no strong odontodes there. But I think they need to eat properly, first.

Did you feed them with alive food to get parasites ?

No, I bought them just recently and they seemed to have issues ever since. I really hope they will recover well.