Does nobody know?
Sorry if I am being a bother here, but I need to know asap, as I am looking to see if I must take this guy back to the fish shop, as I have a 60gallon tank and apparently some of these guys can get to big for the tank, and well, I don't want that
I agree. He looks to be a common plec to me, too. They usually range between 10" up to 18". You're right-he'd probably need bigger than a 60 g just to himself. They're unappreciated fish and I do like them though.
fyi, if you are interested in smaller plecos, rubbernoses, flounder, clown and bristlenose are all fairly common plecos. none of these guys gets over 6".
Common pleco is much to general of a term in my opinion. It's hard to tell
from the photo but this catfish appears to be in the Squaliforma genus
(maybe S. villarsi), otherwise, it's likely one of the Hypostomus species.
And not all "common" plecos get 2 ft long either.mg:
You can rule out the Hypostomus plecostomus. It's not one and I have not seen one for the last few years. It's mostly the Pterygoplichthys pardalis, Pterygoplichthys joselimaianus, etc. P. pardalis is my guess but it's hard to tell from the picture. Either way, that pleco is still one of those that grows to 12 inches and over.
I agree that it's not Hypostomus plecostomus but there are 106 other
possible Hypostomus species that it could be. I will say for certain that it's
not a species from the Pterygoplichthys genus. I've kept many of them
in the past and only about half of these get in the 15"-18" range while the
other half stay in the 8"-12" range. The pleco in question above doesn't look
very large. How big is it?