Otos

[Tonym]

Hi
 
Ive recently purchased a small group of otos they have eaten the the small amount of brown algae which was in the tank. but now they are refusing to eat anything any suggestions on getting them eating. Ive tried Algae wafers and Cucumber but they are ignoring them.

 

[ncguppy830]

otos can be difficult to ffed and many can starve in home aquaria.they do best on algae so consider culturing your on on a rock filled with water and put it outside or in a windowsill.

 

[Paradise3]

Oto's are notoriously hard to feed once they finish off any algae in the tank. I'd recommend culturing your own on a few rocks in a jar or a bowl on a windowsill. I say a few rocks because you need to give time for the algae to re-grow on the first rock while you switch it out for the second or third rock.
 
I plan to get some Oto's for my tank and I'll be doing this as I know how hard they are to feed unless you have natural Algae for them. They won't touch veggies, mine never did anyway and I tried allsorts, or Algae Wafers as it's not their natural instinct to eat veggies or prepared food. It is their natural instinct(much like Rubber Lipped Pleco's) to use their sense of smell to hunt out algae covered rocks and surfaces which contain all the goodness they need. I'm not saying you can't try to wean them onto Algae Wafers but it's very hard and most Oto's starve rather than eat Algae Wafers

 

[Tonym]

Thanks for the replies I have Put lots of large river pebbles in a bucket outside to get them real algae in the mean time im just going to try and feed them cucumber and algae wafers but during the night when they are most active. Hopefully they will start eating.

 

[Paradise3]

Thanks for the replies I have Put lots of large river pebbles in a bucket outside to get them real algae in the mean time im just going to try and feed them cucumber and algae wafers but during the night when they are most active. Hopefully they will start eating.

 
Hopefully the rocks will do them good The thing with Oto's is they are what you could call "Too stubborn to learn" and instead of trying the algae wafers they ignore them completely due to natural instinct. It's the same with Rubber Lipped Pleco's, I got lucky in the fact that mine learnt that Algae Wafer = Food pretty quickly and was eating it rather than ignoring it. Some Oto's will be like that but it's rare and none of mine would ever switch to prepared foods. My little remaining one(long story - Bought 4, 3 died, I got more for my remaining one, he attacked them instead) wouldn't eat prepared foods and like I say - I had a bowl with 3 rocks in it outside growing algae for him.. He ate off one rock every day and they were decent sized rocks