Back in the 1980s when I got my first aquarium you could buy a few species of Corydoras but that was about it. These days there's hunderds of South-American species available. When I saw the big Pterygoplichthys I realized I really wanted something of the Loricariidae family. For that family planetcatfish is the place to do your research.
So, after a lot of reading and staring at pictures of beauties like L260 I decided on Ancistrus Claro. Like all Ancistrus elatively easy to keep and breed and a very strict vegetarian that wouldn't treat my shrimp as an all you can eat buffet. Out of the family of more than 90 species only a handful can be found here.
Now.. where to find these? This country is littered with Ancistrus dolichopterus and Temminckii are common as well as the albino version. You can pick these up for a euro or two from any hobbyist keeping them. Claro proved to be more elusive.
There's only one shop in the country that stocks these and that's Aqua-Ferrytale. (lovely shop, loads of very healthy fish including quite a few hard to find species). So, yesterday I drove over and picked up the last three. These fish come from a small breeder somewhere in Germany who seems to be the only one breeding these commercially in North-West Europe. The guy drives over here about once a quarter to deliver fish.
So, after a lot of reading and staring at pictures of beauties like L260 I decided on Ancistrus Claro. Like all Ancistrus elatively easy to keep and breed and a very strict vegetarian that wouldn't treat my shrimp as an all you can eat buffet. Out of the family of more than 90 species only a handful can be found here.
Now.. where to find these? This country is littered with Ancistrus dolichopterus and Temminckii are common as well as the albino version. You can pick these up for a euro or two from any hobbyist keeping them. Claro proved to be more elusive.
There's only one shop in the country that stocks these and that's Aqua-Ferrytale. (lovely shop, loads of very healthy fish including quite a few hard to find species). So, yesterday I drove over and picked up the last three. These fish come from a small breeder somewhere in Germany who seems to be the only one breeding these commercially in North-West Europe. The guy drives over here about once a quarter to deliver fish.
Got these home, carefully drip acclimatised them and let them go. They went and hid behind the plants and started scraping away at the 6 years of growth on the filter housing.
I'm really quite curious how these will do. I suspect I've got two females and one male and would really like to get these to breed.
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