Viktor, you are torturing me! I'm not a pleco guy, but the Luteus is a fish I am lusting after more and more. Every time this thread re-surfaces, I quickly click hoping for more info on the species...and instead find myself looking at big dead hunchbacked common plecos, or big living common plecos which simply remind me why I'm not a pleco guy!
I have a bunch of bristlenose plecos merrily breeding here and there...and a couple Hypostomus laplatae that I got only because their natural range suggested that they would do well in cooler water. They do...although one of them looks to my decidedly pleco-untrained eye to be perhaps a bit too plump and causes me some concern...
The Luteus originates from a similar non-tropical area so it should also be a candidate for my tanks. Unlike the Laplatae, the Luteus looks absolutely spectacular.....but the price tag of the few that pop up in my area is equally spectacular. Right now I have access to a single individual, 8 inches in length...and it's Can$475. For a single fish, about which I know very little, to be experimentally maintained in what most would consider very cool water? Not in this lifetime!
But, man, as soon as some enterprising Canuckistani pleco breeder starts producing these and I can grab a few little ones in the hundred-buck range...I'm in!
Hey,
Niki_up
...I'm talkin' to
you!