John q
Member
She looks good đź‘Ť
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Otocinclus Sp.
- Thread starter Mat H
- Start date
louis_last
Member
Here's potentially a male with two of the fatter females, please excuse how dirty my glass is. Apparently "Male hypoptopomins posses a urogenital papilla located immediately posterior to the anus. It is absent in females" but does anyone know what urogenital papilla look like in fish?
I'm finding that these definitely appreciate live food much more than otocinclus. They aren't agile enough to catch daphnia but hoover them up off the prefilter and will actively pick large seed shrimp out the substrate. Having watched a single individual happily chew through ten in a row that it trapped against the glass where it meets the substrate it's hard to imagine that these would be totally safe for baby shrimp. They seem to much prefer seed shrimp to daphnia which doesn't make a lot of sense to me but they appear to "smell" seed shrimp the minute I add them to the tank and not when I add daphnia.
They were eating truly incredible amounts of gel food but now that they've all returned to a proper weight this is naturally slowing down. I suspect these guys might eat hydra very well.
For some reason amanos seem to like picking over their skin and the otothyropsis are totally fine with this. Cherries don't do it but amanos do. I was worried the first few times I saw it as I thought it was strange that the fish didn't swim away but it doesn't seem to bother them and even more surprisingly I have seen the otothyropsis cleaning large amanos that also seem to tolerate it. I do wonder if freshly moulted shrimp are safe from these guys though.
I'm finding that these definitely appreciate live food much more than otocinclus. They aren't agile enough to catch daphnia but hoover them up off the prefilter and will actively pick large seed shrimp out the substrate. Having watched a single individual happily chew through ten in a row that it trapped against the glass where it meets the substrate it's hard to imagine that these would be totally safe for baby shrimp. They seem to much prefer seed shrimp to daphnia which doesn't make a lot of sense to me but they appear to "smell" seed shrimp the minute I add them to the tank and not when I add daphnia.
They were eating truly incredible amounts of gel food but now that they've all returned to a proper weight this is naturally slowing down. I suspect these guys might eat hydra very well.
For some reason amanos seem to like picking over their skin and the otothyropsis are totally fine with this. Cherries don't do it but amanos do. I was worried the first few times I saw it as I thought it was strange that the fish didn't swim away but it doesn't seem to bother them and even more surprisingly I have seen the otothyropsis cleaning large amanos that also seem to tolerate it. I do wonder if freshly moulted shrimp are safe from these guys though.
Hi all,
cheers Darrel
It will just be a little outgrowth of flesh, probably finger-shaped.
cheers Darrel
louis_last
Member
The females have all fattened up nicely, two in particular are hugely fat and I hope I may soon get spawn. It seems I have four females and two males which is a stroke of luck. The only updated observation I have on these is that they really, really like live daphnia much more than I would have expected- which is odd because they are totally incapable of catching them. They can only get them when they become trapped on the surface of my prefilter so I've begun squirting pippette fulls of daphnia straight on there for them to eat and weirdly they seem to strongly favour live daphnia over ANY other food I've offered them. If they have a choice between live daphnia or an algae wafer/gel food they're going for the daphnia every single time, especially the females, and they seem to smell them instant they're in the tank..
I find this a little confusing as they are so clearly adapted to grazing biofilm and not catching crustaceans but I suppose maybe they get a lot of copepods or something comparable in their natural diet but it's interesting that they respond so strongly to even just the smell of daphnia. It's not obvious to me now what proportion of their diet should consist of protein though. They certainly eat a lot of algae just like otos and I haven't had to clean the glass since I got them, but given the choice it seems they would happily live on daphnia alone. Right now I'm hedging my bets by rotating between home made veggie gel food with a little added protein and hikari carnivore pellets on alternate days and then in the evening sometimes they get a squirt of daphnia but I've heard that with regular otos too much protein can cause problems. It's hard to know what might be best given that there's not much written about these fish.
I find this a little confusing as they are so clearly adapted to grazing biofilm and not catching crustaceans but I suppose maybe they get a lot of copepods or something comparable in their natural diet but it's interesting that they respond so strongly to even just the smell of daphnia. It's not obvious to me now what proportion of their diet should consist of protein though. They certainly eat a lot of algae just like otos and I haven't had to clean the glass since I got them, but given the choice it seems they would happily live on daphnia alone. Right now I'm hedging my bets by rotating between home made veggie gel food with a little added protein and hikari carnivore pellets on alternate days and then in the evening sometimes they get a squirt of daphnia but I've heard that with regular otos too much protein can cause problems. It's hard to know what might be best given that there's not much written about these fish.
