Ancistrus sp. L530 "Schneeflocke"

This species has no formal scientific name. It circulated in the hobby as the Schneeflocke, or snowflake, for years before it was finally assigned the code L530 in 2025 - one of four long-familiar Ancistrus that had been sitting in tanks without a number.¹ It comes from the Rio Negro drainage in Brazil, a river now swinging between extremes. In October 2023 the Negro dropped to the lowest level recorded at Manaus in 121 years of measurement.² Twelve months later it broke that record again, hitting 12.66 metres against a normal October level of about 21.³ Two years before the first of those droughts, the same river had set an all-time high. An undescribed fish carries no IUCN assessment and no conservation status, which means nobody is officially tracking what any of this does to it.

The fish you're looking at were bred here in Eugene, Oregon - not collected from the wild. Building a captive population now means there's something to fall back on regardless of what happens to the habitat.

1. Seidel, I. Vier neue L-Nummern für lange bekannte Ancistrus-Arten. Die Aquarien- und Terrarienzeitschrift (DATZ) 78(2), 46-50 (2025).

2. NASA Earth Observatory. Drought on the Rio Negro. (2023).

3. Copernicus / EU Space Programme. Record Drought in the Río Negro. (2024).