Hi, this is a picture of a female that i got from a freind a couple weeks ago, as you can see the colouration is weird, can anyone explain why? or is it a colour morph of a BN?



Comparison with Smaller male



If anyone needs more photos or you want me to get a more detailed one, just ask

Thanks in advance

James

I would say that it is Ancistrus sp. rather than the Common Bristlenose...cf. Cirrhosus. Bn's can display stress markings that look similar but i'd still opt for it not being a common.

Your male definitely looks like Cirrhosus with the black spot at the base of the first dorsal fin ray.

i agree its not a common. What it is will be very hard to tell, we will def need more pics. some from above, some from below.

Thanks, i'll try and get some more pictures when i've done my homework, just came home from school

I agree with what all the others have said, and can't offer any insights beyond that, but I would offer some further questions.
How old is that female? A. cf cirrhosus females rarely have bristles and the ones that do are larger older females, not that I believe this to be a cf cirrhosus. So another question to those who are more experienced with ID, is what species commonly have bristled females? Do you know if she was wild caught? What further info can your friend give you about her, if anything?

I am not sure how old she is or whether she is wild caught, but she is about 3.5 inches long so that may be a rough indicator to her age.


Here is another photo of the female, i will get some more from top and below but this is all i can get at the moment

The top picture looks like a male to me, I could be wrong but though you think she is female..

never quite seen so many bristles on a female before, though there may be rare exceptions...

identifying and sexing can be extremely difficult when fish are so young and small, I had a small fish that looked the same colour as yours and it turned out to be ancistrus teminckii, though its colours morphed slightly as it got bigger and is now about 4inches. though she still as no bristles...

good luck getting more photo's..

lj

by the way nice gibbicep in the background

OK, thanks everyone, i manged to get another picture of the BN, but this time from underneath, it looks quite fat, could this mean that it female and possibly gravid?
i am quite sure that it is female she is about twice the size of the male and the bristles on the male are like a 'tree growing out of his face' as my sister so kindly puts it
You can see the difference in the first 2 pictures



Sorry it is not very detailed, i only had a couple of seconds to take the picture


Hope this helps

James

Got a better picture from above, hope this helps and try to ignore the poop
Another question i'm afraid, there is a normal coloured brown patch on her right gill, does this mean that she is getting colouration? or is it just a fluke.





Thanks everyone

James

Looks like a wild cought sub species to me. there are so many variation of what people would call a common bistlenose. for example i have seen a pair of breeding commons that were 9" . where most commons only reach 3-6 inches

OK, so this is probably never going to be solved, the question of what BN is this
But anyway, would this female still breed with a normale male, or do you think i should keep her seperate?
Kind of unfortunate really when i went to collect her i though it was going to be a nice common female, but instead it turned out twice the size of the male and a bizarre colour...
I saw a lovely male and female pair of BNs at my LFS today, do you think i should buy them?

Thanks

James

yes, no...who knows.

Do you have the tank size or extra tank for breeding? do you have the time to breed them? do you think that you will be able to give all the fry the care they need to have?

if you can answer all of the above questions with a yes then feel free to get into the breeding game. if you think that it might be an issue then i would suggest waiting for a while. Sorry if thats a bit blunt but im yet to have my moring coffee

the truth is that keeping bristlenose and breeding them are two different things and the jump from one to the other is a large one. It must be a considered thing to get into breeding.

in regards to the question of the other female. As she is a different species she wont interbreed.

I once had a pair of LDA72 that looked just like this one....they have a diff pattern on there body instead of spots like the common does..

heres a female i had...





cheers......

Thanks everyone you are all a great help
But is it only commons that have the black spot at the base of their dorsal fn? because this female seems to have that spot


Thanks Again

James