Octocinclus Keep Dieing

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

ricardo48

Aquarium Advice Freak
Joined
Nov 6, 2008
Messages
245
Location
UPPER RISSINGTON
Anyone know why my otto's keep dieing?

They slowly start turning a pale white colour from black and then every now and then find them dead at the bottom.

All tank parameters are fine with 0 ammonia etc.

They survive for a good few weeks then one by one start dieing. They use to be active all day long on glass but now adays they hide all day at back and only come out sucking at night.

A few died with weird rotting of the head and the rest are turning white.

Nothing else in tank is looking bad and i change 25% water weekly and have medium planted tank using EI method.
 
How old is the tank?

It sounds like you might not be getting good stock. Consider getting 1 from another LFS that uses a different supplier.

Many will tell you Ottos can be difficult to keep and sensitive to water parameters. The only thing making me believe something else going on here is the "rotting of the head" comment, which may mean you're getting diseased stock.
 
1 year old setup.

Ye 2 of the 5 which died had slow decaying of the head.. almost as if it was caving in more and more daily. They then finally died.

Others seem ok but are very shy and not as dark black as they use to be.
 
This may be a stupid question, but do they have enough to eat? Lots of algae in the tank, or feeding algae wafers?

Well fed otos should have nice rounded tummies. You often find starving ones at the lfs, and that is one reason that they die.
 
Well there is still GSA on leaves and my glass which i scrub off weekly so algae is there.

Thought this is all they needed?
 
Back
Top Bottom