Ok ...more info. Colors are not a good factor to use in ID-ing fishes as stress and also health of the fish can make a major difference. Like kev said there are no white patch on the fins...as u can see the pix above (credits to be given to amazon-exotic imports and petfrd.com) the fishes are in good condition and colors are showing. Usually not wat we see in LFS. So we need to bring this factor into consideration...poor condition specimens. So u wont see much of the white patch and colors are faded. Plus XL also received mixed stock of L263 inside which also looks similar to L264 except the colors are different.

The main factor to look for in Id-ing of fish are :

• location of the fins
• spots---(size,position,shape and quantity)
• exterior body shape
• teeth marks and quantity

Well those are not all...i dun wanna go counting fin rays and teeth...take too much time and when i'm done counting, the fish would already be dead .

Lets start with the adipose fin...i think...well the tiny fin on the top after the dorsal and before the caudal. For Leporacanthicus spp. the tiny fins are further apart from the two main fins...which means the gap between them are wider. As u can see the pix of the Pseudacanthicus spp. the tiny fin sits much nearer and has smaller gap in between the main fins...sometimes even touching.

Ok second part. Spots...this can be quite hard to id as u have to see a lot of spots. Well Lep.s usually have spots one way or the other, usually it is round in shape and has more of them compared to Pseuda.s. Pseudacanthicus spots, if present, are not always round but sometimes it will have joined circles and so the circle shape spots are not consistent...In the pics above, u can see that the spots of pseuda. L160 is larger than L264 and also they have lesser amount too.

Body id...hmmm As u can see again...Leps have longer slender tail while pseudas have a fatter chunkier tail. When seen from above, a pseuda looks more like a plane compared to a lep...lep is a skinny plane Leps always have a longer sharper snout compared to the broad one of a pseuda. Something like comparing a crocodile and an alligator. Generally people classify leps as vampire pleco. This is because they have two "fangs" which they use to pry open snail shells...well thats what the book says...but not all leps have this though. Pseudas dun need this...with the size of their big mouth...the whole snail goes in

Ok...my hand is tired liao...hope this info does help u guys out there. And i dun mean to talk bad about anyone...just pointing out some of the facts that i got. Maybe XL did mix in a few L160 by mistake along with their L264 and L263. As wheni was there, i checked them and saw no l160s available...maybe i missed out a couple of guys

Well...cheers