Maybe a stupid question...

I joined this forum cos I was confused about the L numbers regarding plecos. When I got my ancistrus the other day, the lady insisted I remember which one was a L144. I wrote it down... but what does it mean?

And... what's a Red Fire? Or sp3? I'm a python keeper guys... this fish technical info is beyond me. Someone set me straight?

Here's a photo of the babies, and a 1,5cm cherry girl.

lol it can be pretty confusing, have a look at this link which might help.
Theres info in there about the L system.

Just say Pleco

And here is a complete list with pics.
http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/numbers.php?mode=l&thumbs=16
HTH

The Link that doodles gave explains the whole system very well, just to expand things for your particular batch, L144 is the number given for the Black eyed yellow bristlenose a fairly common and popular Plec from the Ancistrus genus e.g. Bristlenoses, this refers to the soft growths that appear on the faces, sp4 relates to 'Specimen' i believe, when more than 1 morph/variation of a particular fish is found in the same genus instead of a new L-number as its basically the same fish it just gets an sp number, without knowing the full name its hard to ID your fish, i imagine its some form of Ancistrus, as for the "Red Fire" i have no idea, i've never heard this name used before, it looks like one of the colour morphs thats being sold as Super Red basically a Calico BN bred for this colouration, there have been a few topics on the net about Red Plecos, hopefully somebody will have better info than me for you. hope that helps

There are many species of new plecs that have been discovered & imported who are not scientifically described, meaning that they have no scientific name. To distiguish these, they were often simply refered to by their "common" name which was confusing as not everyone used the same common name. For instance, someone might call a plec a white-spot plec, while the same plec might be refered to by others as a white-dot plecs and still others by a snowball plec. To try to add some uniformity to plec naming, a German magazine, DATZ came up with a system to catalog the newly imported plecs & assigned them "L-numbers".

To add further confusion, the three Ancistrus pictured are all color variations of the "Common" BN which is tentitively labeled Ancistrus cf. cirrhosus. The "true" L144 is actually though to be a different fish that isn't widely distributed in the hobby but appears similar.