Otocinclus and tomato

[sciencefiction]

I haven't seen many suggest feeding oto cats with tomato but I found out accidentally that they love it when once the piece I gave to my common pleco fell at the bottom of the tank and my zebra otto immediately got busy chomping it down.

I normally put the bottom part of the tomato which has more "meat" and I clean any left over seeds.

Here is today's picture taken seconds after I put the tomato(left over from making my sandwitch 🙂 )

 

[Greenfinger2]

Hi Sciencefiction Looks like they are Enjoying it 😎 Will it make the shrimps a redder colour 😀

 

[sciencefiction]

Will it make the shrimps a redder colour

He, he. I don't know about being redder but look at the larger shrimp at the bottom of the tomato on the below picture. It looks like it's missing a chunk of its belly, lol. Some of them are rili like so have clear parts in the body and over the tomato it looks like "the others" from Game of Thrones 🙂

 

[zozo]

A Tomato contains loads of Carotene 🙂 that's why we get orange brown when we go sunbading on a tomato or carot diet... If the pigment which makes shrimps red or pink, like the pink flamingos get pink because eating the shrimps is carotene it will color them for sure. Maybe you'll get an orange Oto..

 

[sciencefiction]

I was wondering why my face is turning orange..... I've to cut down on the tomato....
I think for shrimp the tannins and leaf litter play a good role in their red coloration.

Yesterday I managed to get a nice picture of a male shrimp in my other tank which looked fancy colours:


And here is a bad attempt at taking a picture of my mutated to blue cherry. This girl needs more tomato 😛

 

[zozo]

In that tomato picture you also see nicely the translucence of the oto's, where the red is shining trough. That's beautiful.. 🙂 I noticed this when they hang under the multicolored Nymphea leaves, then those places glow like they are Brass or copper plated.. Little stunningly beautifull fish they are..