As a male bristlenoses bristles develop, do they start off around the lip, and grow up their face as they get older, or do the up the face bristles grow from a young age?

I'm just wondering, as I have two bristly bristlenoses, both with bristles around the lip. The larger and older one has bristles about a few mm long around the lip and only the lip. The younger one has noticeably more bristles around the lip, and they are longer, and got further back than those on the older plec, but neither have any up their face.
So, can anyone enlighten me on this? :3

Good Question............
In my expierance its hard to tell if there male or female untill they get mature..
My common female who is mature at about 3.5 " has no bristle's atol just like your female in your pic's also my female albino has no bristle's atol also she is only small at around 3" but she has spawned twice.....

On the other hand my two L182 female's both have bristle's around there lips...

Are you talking about common BN's??

I also think you can sex BN's off behaviour...
ie.
My males are very reclusive and tend to hide alot during the day staking there cave's out whilst a female is alot more active during the day and will almost certantly be the first on the food.....

And to be honest ive never brought a male up from young ive always bought fully mature male's but ive had fry turn into female's but i will look into it further for you and also im sure someone could add some more weight to this...

sorry i cant be more helpfull...

I'm talking about my starry BN's, well, least thats what they are in my LFS's mahoosive book of Plecs
I know the females of two I'm talking about get bristles, so thats why I'm curious lol!
I know that the larger one does tend to hang around a small peice of drift wood against the back. The way it's shaped, it forms a little -bridge- as such, and the plec hangs out under there a lot.
The younger likes to hang about near Lars a lot, and in a corner at the back, where it can hide behind a lot of dense plants and such.
Maybe the larger one is male, and is staking out it's 'cave', I havn't seen it move much from that general area in a while. It could be that both are male, because in all honesty, they don't go near each other, and tend to stick to different sides of the tank. Could that be a something? Lars just goes where ever she pleases in te tank, so could this different behavior point to males?

Aha, I'm going on a long ramble now xD; And yeah, buying males from mature seems like a nice idea to me now lol! I guess I just love raising then from little. Plus a juvenile is like, £5, compared to £20 for a fully grown!

Thanks for your help Curby, you've definatly made me look into behavior a bit more!

Top shot deano, one of the best comparitive pictures you could hope
to take
J

Pictures! Lots and lots of pictures of Pleco heads!
Tim (bigger one):



Bit fuzzy this, sorry D:

I think this one if for Tim, might be Gary lol


Gary(smaller one, lots of him lol):
Flash makes pleco bellys look ick :P Plus he looks skinny there, that's when I first got him!

In the net before he went in properly, or is it Tim? Arg D:






Plus Fat Head Lars, is it me, or does she look a bit fat here lol!

I think that nick name my stick to her now :3

Does that help a bit? I think a few of them may be muddled up, they look so similar, and Tim hasn't been out much in a while, so I can't really tell them apart well :P If you have any answers, can you mention which picture your referring to, else I'll get confused lol! xD;

Thanks,
Katie

Some nice pix in that bunch Spreebok.
Notice in the last pic of Lars the mouth section is wide and eliptical with the defininite
4 tooth sections, now look at the first of Tim- notice it's a lot rounder with more of the mouth
parts running from front to back versus side to side, if that made any sense.
I'd say you have 2 males looking at the pics and mouth part comparisons also the way the bristles have split(all my females have bristles but no splits in them) suggests males, the dead give away
will be when they start to run bristles up the middle of the face( I have no doubt that "will" happen)
On a side note -- I'm not sure what these fish were sold to you as but the 2 pix of the side profile
suggest to me that they are "Rio Ucayali" or orange spots, if you look at the pix and the colour of the spots in the dorsal fin and especially the leading rays on the pectorals-- look very "orange" to me.
2 males .
J

im going with two males also

Don't quote me on the species that you have , try to get some more opinions and then think about trying to find a female.
6 pound is not a bad deal, that works out to be about $12-$15 OZ and down here in Adelaide where
stuff is harder to find they can range from $20-$30-$40 depending how lucky you are.
I couldn't really see them wanting to spawn together with the commons, all though saying that there is guy in OZ who is believed to X peppermints with long fin commons to get long fin pepps.
As for sexual maturity , like most ancistrus could be 18 months could be 30 months(2.5 years), no real guarantees with that one.
J

What size are they?
I have paid £5 for a inch long BN before now, but tbh I do not like them that small prefer to get then around 2inch in size
generally by then you can see some bristles on the males, however as previously mentioned that works for commons but with some of the other species the females also have bristles on their lips