A small question about Bristles~ (Pic Heavy)

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!

Spreebok wrote:

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

sounds like a young male you have to me what size and age are they you can normally tell the sex by the shape of the fish also the male being slimmer and having a longer looking head the female having a rounder wider shaped head

female on the left and a younger male

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

Quote :

sounds like a young male you have to me what size and age are they you can normally tell the sex by the shape of the fish also the male being slimmer and having a longer looking head the female having a rounder wider shaped head

Ugh, lawd, ages, gotta remember now lol!
I reckon Tim is about 3-4 months old. I got 'im on the 29th August, and whilst I havn't been able to properly measure 'im for a while, I'd say around 8 cm or a bit over.
Gary, the smaller one, was 6.5cm on the 1st of december, so probably a bit bigger by now. Age wise, I'm not sure. I can't remember exactly when I got him, but it was towards the end of november, and he was around 6-6.5cm then.
Looking at your lovely comparison picture, I would hazard a guess that Gary it more likely to be male, as his head is skinnier, whilst Tims is quite broad, a lot more like Lars'. I'll try and post some pictures later, that might help lol!

Quote :

because in all honesty, they don't go near each other, and tend to stick to different sides of the tank

Typical, as soon as I wrote that and turned off the PC, I found them both at the filter end of the tank! :roll:
However, when one of them got too close to the driftwood mentioned, the one staking it out did chase him off a bit...
But then again, Lars does that to the one that stays by her occasionally xD;

deano wrote:

Spreebok wrote:

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

sounds like a young male you have to me what size and age are they you can normally tell the sex by the shape of the fish also the male being slimmer and having a longer looking head the female having a rounder wider shaped head

female on the left and a younger male

Nice shot mate, will have to test this theory on my 2 x L182 one if def a male but unsure on the other

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

Quote :

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 .

Haha, a barrage of pics is the best way
Oh fab! I'm quite pleased about that, least it makes sense why they spend most of their time staking out their different caves xD Plus I'm happy that the species thing is cleared up, Rio Ucayali, I like that! They only cost £6 each, so did I get a good deal? lol I'm looking forward to when the bristles start going up, it's so ugly it's adorable! :3
I never thought of looking at their mouth, I just assumed they were all the same lol! Well, their mouth are usually moving too fast on the glass to get a good look!
Thanks hugely!

Quote :

im going with two males also

Cheers

I have a few more quick questions for you all
Will the Rio's bredd with my common BN, or am I gonna have to get a lovely Lady Rio?
And at what age do these guys sexually mature generally?

Thanks again!

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

Quote :

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.

Hm, will do on that one
Haha, thats no so bad then
Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and they'll have babies that are black in colour with the white/orange spots in the form of a commons markings. That would look awesome
And sounds like it's gonna be a waiting game for me then :P

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

Quote :

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

I think both were around 2" when I got them, both for about £6 :3
Now, they're about 6.5-7cm for the smallest and about 7-8cm for the biggest.

Lars was about £3.50, was about 1.5" back then :3

I have a nice female she is about 5 inch L182 that is........

And as for the pics hmmm its very hard to tell with 182's as ive got 3 growing out in my dads large cichlid tank and they all have bristle's just like the one's in your pic's....female 182's also have forked bristle's as well so dont be mislead by the pic's....

I cannot sex any yet untill they mature a little more but dont forget 182's grow large so it could be a while before you truly no.....

I take is L182 is the L number for orange spots? I fail at L Numbers lol!
I'm fingers crossed at least one is male, as I've noticed that one has claimed the cave in the big chunk of drift I have, spends most of his time in and around there

The L182 is one of the "BLACK" with "bright white" spot variants, the "Rio Ucayali" can tend to look black but carries more of the orange spots, as for an Lno--the orange "DATZ" cat-alogue doesn't even have an Ancistrus Rio Ucayali listed
and the "back to nature" guide only lists them as Rio Ucayali with no Lno.
Now -- that paragraph was kind of a waste of time, looking through the Datz cat-alogue I found the L059 which does look almost exactly like your fish- black base some white spots and orange spots on the fin edges, also I refered to your as an "orange spot" they only have a red spot listed (L110) which is clearly not the fish you have-- getting confused yet?
Maybe head over to planetcatfish and reference L059 and L110 and I'm sure they Rio Ucayali there you just have to look for it under the species name not the number. That should keep you busy for a little while Spreebok.
J

Oh god, my brain just hemorrhaged
L Numbers and Scientific names just go WHIZZ! Right overhead

Looking at P.C, the L110 doesn't look anything like them, but the L059's look very similar! However, whilst the plecs pictured do have very similar finnage, they have much more white specks than my guys! Plus, two of the three pictures eem to have white seams showing on their tails Maybe it could be that they get this stuff in as they mature? Arrrhghdhg I dunno

lol