Emma,
Thanks a lot for your help.
I decided to go ahead and get one, shown below already in my tank. Unfortunately, the pictures are still very bad: I made about 50 and these were the two best (yuck!). Out of the four lfs had, this one had much weaker bristles: two 2mm bristles up front and (which I noticed only at home) a few very short (<1mm) and thin ones around. Hopefully it is a female so I can get a male for her; otherwise I'm in trouble since this is the only store around that has them now. The fish itself is about 2.5".
(I wish I saw your reply before buying it...as luck has it, it is probably an underdeveloped male...)
The fish is amazing. First, it pooped for half hour, then it went into a routine: hide inside driftwood for a while, come out to clean a square inch of glass, go back into driftwood. (I deliberately did not clean one side of the tank from algae and it seems to enjoy working on it.)
As for selling only one sex: this is what lfs' around here do with Odessa barbs. I got three, and it took three months of real bad fighting until I could find them some girls.... But I don't think this is the case with this particular lfs, it does not use local suppliers.
One more question:
Is there a way to distinguish between a common and a female bristlenose? (On the way out from lfs I've noticed that his tank of common plecos had a few that looked like bristlenose without bristles...) Comparing the new fish to my common I've noticed that the bottom fin of the bristlenose is tiny comparing to the common, it also has 7 veins in the upper fin vs 13 of my common...
Thanks a lot for your help.
I decided to go ahead and get one, shown below already in my tank. Unfortunately, the pictures are still very bad: I made about 50 and these were the two best (yuck!). Out of the four lfs had, this one had much weaker bristles: two 2mm bristles up front and (which I noticed only at home) a few very short (<1mm) and thin ones around. Hopefully it is a female so I can get a male for her; otherwise I'm in trouble since this is the only store around that has them now. The fish itself is about 2.5".
(I wish I saw your reply before buying it...as luck has it, it is probably an underdeveloped male...)
The fish is amazing. First, it pooped for half hour, then it went into a routine: hide inside driftwood for a while, come out to clean a square inch of glass, go back into driftwood. (I deliberately did not clean one side of the tank from algae and it seems to enjoy working on it.)
As for selling only one sex: this is what lfs' around here do with Odessa barbs. I got three, and it took three months of real bad fighting until I could find them some girls.... But I don't think this is the case with this particular lfs, it does not use local suppliers.
One more question:
Is there a way to distinguish between a common and a female bristlenose? (On the way out from lfs I've noticed that his tank of common plecos had a few that looked like bristlenose without bristles...) Comparing the new fish to my common I've noticed that the bottom fin of the bristlenose is tiny comparing to the common, it also has 7 veins in the upper fin vs 13 of my common...
