What Plec Do You Have?

[§tudz]

Hi,

I have noticed many, many posted on this forum from people asking if they have a sailfin or a common, so I decided to write this little article to help out, and reduce the repeated questions. (I know I've repeated questions in the past)

How to distinguish between your Plecs:

Common Plec - Liposarcus pardalis

Colourations and Physical Bits:
Main body colour is a dark brown, with black stripes near the tail, and slowly change into a jaguar style mottling towards the head.

Size:
18”+

Pictures can be found here.

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Common Plec - Hypostomus punctatus *

Colourations and Physical Bits:
Main body colour is a ginger/Brown, with black stripes mottling. Similar to the Liposarcus pardalis but grows slightly smaller and the colourations are different. The mottling gives an overall black colouration.

Size:
12"+

Pictures can be found here.

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SailFin Plec/Gibbiceps Plec - Glyptoperichthys gibbiceps


Colourations and Physical Bits:
Main body colour is a ginger/Gold with Leopard style brown markings cover the body, as well as the fins. The easiest way, apart from colouration, to tell this fish apart from the common plecs is the MASSIVE dorsal fin, thus the common name Sailfin Plec.

Size:
20”+

Other Notes:
Often Confused with the L001/L022 Plec (See Below)

Pictures can be found here.

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Leopard Plec - Glyptoperichthys joselimaianus


Colourations and Physical Bits:
This has almost the opposite colouration to the Gibby.
Main body colour is a Black with Leopard style gold/brown markings cover the body, as well as the fins. This also has a large dorsal fin, but it grows to a smaller size, so it better suited to those of us without 200L tanks

Size:
7"+

Pictures can be found here.


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I hope this helps some people, and is in some way informative.


*Edit Change link for: Hypostomus punctatus

 

[KathyM]

How come the pics on the hypostomus link are liposarcus? Count the dorsal rays. 11-14 = liposarcus. Hypostomus species only have 5-8.

I could throw a spanner in the works and say that in some circles, liposarcus are classed as sailfins as well as gibbies and L001s *lmao*.....

 

[§tudz]

oh dear... got a better link for this article then please?

 

[KathyM]

Just Googling now, but it seems information is thin on the ground because of the lumping together of "common plec" species.

 

[KathyM]

http/www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=48949

There you go!

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I think the best way to tell between sailfins and commons is simply by pics as their defining characteristics/physical forms can be too similar somtimes to describe accuratly.

http/www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loric...postom/87_F.PHP

http/www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loric...posarc/88_F.PHP

http/www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/loric...ptope/148_F.PHP


Not to mention you can get hybrids and morphs of these great plecs, ID'ing can be tricky- in general they have pretty much the same requirements, the most important thing to know is how larger they can get- this can usually be done though by counting the number of rays in your common or sailfin plecs fin.
Not all sailfins get to over 2ft long, neither is 12inches the minimum size for common plecs. 2 of my common plecs, despite been given ideal conditions since day 1, neither of them has exceeded 10inches. Of course though you should also expect the largest size when planning tank upgrades.

 

[§tudz]

just wondered if this post is worthy of being sticky, to help stop all the same questions about these 3 species?