Otto fish not swimming/hardly eating anything

[Staticrzr]

Good evening guys.

I have a 100l planted tank where i have 18 neons, 2 SAE, 12 RCS and i recently added(1 and a half week ago) 3 ottos. I bought 4, but one died during transport(2.5 hours drive).
My water parameters are good, the other fish are perfectly fine, but since the moment i added them in the tank (proper acclimatization was done) i hardly seen them swimming and eating. One of them died yesterday and now i'm left with only 2.

Any ideeas? Is there any chance they were sick to begin with ? i don't see any signs of sickness on them except the fact that they are not swimming/eating much.

 

[zozo]

Oto's are known to totaly stress out from suddenly changing their habbitat and commonly show the symptoms you describe, not eating and sometimes even dying the first weeks. That's why it is a good thing to ask the LFS since when they arived in the shop if this is shorter than a few weeks it's better to wait a few more and go back and buy active healthy looking ones. If they arrived shortly before you bought them the stress is twice the load for them..

Sounds a bit rude but waiting it out for a while you at least buy the stronger ones and the weaker ones will just die in the shop. But hey, that's business and buying oto's is always a risky one. Leave the most riks at the lfs they make the money, we spend it... 😉

 

[Staticrzr]

so i might get lucky and this 2 little fellows will get back to their feet ?

 

[zozo]

You can't do much more than wait it out and hope they make it, larger numbers would also be more comforting for them because the are highly social and hierarchical..

i was lucky and lost 0 from the 7 i bought, they even weren't stressed an at from day one.. But many people report the same issues as you experience.. My best bet is, they probably were still very stressed at the lfs for what ever reason i can not know and you unintentionaly stressed them even more.

 

[AnhBui]

If you have to travel that far from store to your house. It would be better if you:
1. Prepare a box, put them in while you are on the way.
2. And a quarantine tank at home. Put your fishes in quarantine tank, use air pump and cover the tank with black curtain. Make sure temperature is from 21 to 26oC.
3. Don't feed them at the first day.
4. If you have blackwater or extract from erminalia catappa leaf, use it but not too much, and it is depending on your tank size. My suggestion is to use two or three leaves for 100l tank.

 

[sciencefiction]

Sometimes they are just in poor condition already. Ottos rarely recover if they had been mistreated. Just try again from a different source. Whichever survive will live for years and they are normally hardy fish otherwise.