New Otocinclus

Guber

I was in the next town over (about 20 minutes) away from my house but i usually don't go to said town because it's ridiculously high crime rate. Anywho, some friends had been telling me a store in said town had a really good fish selection in which they always buy their fish due to the good health etc. So i decided to stop in and they had a pretty big group of Oto's which I had been hoping to buy for awhile. All of them in the tank seemed to have rounded belly's of some proportion or another so i figured I should take my chances. I had been testing my water params after finishing treating ich last week and everything was finally sitting normal again at 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and 10-20 nitrate. I got 2 of the little guys. When they finally were in my tank they went straight to the brown algae on the back of my glass and air tube. I have plenty of brown algae going around on my glass and various ornaments but bought some hikari wafers just in case. I have to say, these guys are little houdini's though and have quite a good dissapearing act. Just thought i'd share and ask if anyone has any advice on keeping the little fellas.

1077

Plenty of algae, and no sudden changes in water temps or parameters and they will do well.

Guber

sounds easy enough. i'll check params again when i get home from school. hopefully i don't get an ammonia spike, i know they're heavy poopers! at least it looked like they were in the bag ride home.

willow

nothing to addjust wanted to say good luck with the ottos. :)

wato

great pick up man!

Guber

It's been looking like the oto's have already picked clean just about all the brown algae i had stockpiled before purchasing them. And they did it real fast. I'm worried they may be hungry but i'm also not sure how to go about giving them algae wafers. I've tried twice and they don't really pay much attention to it. They may pass by and give it a quick nibble but they just continue on their way. I have some lettuce in the fridge but no clip to sink it :( what should i do?

willow

have you thought abou this.
get some stones from the yard,put them in a bucket,leave it in the sun.you
should be able to "grow your own" algae in a matter of time.
the lettus could you perhaps poke it down into the tank with a clean stick,so a little
of it sits in the gravel to hold it ?

1077

You could take a rock and rubberband to attach lettuce to the rock to hold it down. You might also check out WARDLEYS tropical Goldfish flake GOURMET BLEND .I have found that my solitary oto and all of my plecos love this food .IT has lots of vegetable matter in it .

Guber

Unfortunately I got home today and noticed one of my Oto's missing. I thought he was just hiding out like usual. They do dissapearing acts often. But what i figured was true, Found him dead behind some driftwood :(

paytheplayer

This is why I stopped getting them. They are great....when they survive. But they are known to die, sometimes quickly and often.