Slime Sucking Oto.

[CBBP]

I was observing my sandy bottom fish tank and I noticed an oto pretending to suck at plants and sand. He slowly was making his way towards cory Catfish munching on some wafers. He soon wiggled into the bunch of cories and sucked onto to one of the large adult cories. he latched on just behind the dorsal fun and started sucking. the cory seemed pained by this and quickly bolted away off into the plants. the oto jumped onto a nearby plant and pretended to clean then but soon he was back on another cory sucking at it in the same spot.

is this harmful for the cories?
what can i do?

 

[nmonks]

Yes, it's harmful. It removes the mucous on the outside of the fish, and after a while causes blistering (?) on the skin. Basically a rash. Not nice, and a route for secondary infections. Once the skin goes red and blistery, the Otocinclus scratch it even more, because they get extra yumminess from the blood and decaying flesh.

Otocinclus spp. seem to do this only on certain (stupid?) fish that sit still ong enough. In my case, I saw it happen on some large gobies, but Corydoras don't surprise me. Personally, I'd only keep Otocinclus with smaller or fast-moving species, such as tetras. Plecs also seem immune.

I have no idea if Otocinclus do this naturally or whether it's because of a nutrional problem, like not enough of what they really want to eat. Certainly, that's a possibility.

Cheers, Neale

 

[CBBP]

what should i do?

 

[nmonks]

Wish I knew. My solution was to put the otos in another tank, with just neons and danios, where they could do no harm.

Cheers, Neale

what should i do?

 

[jollysue]

I don't remember where I saw this informati