Otocinclus fry, pics (56K)

[torbanite]

Hi,
I went to check on my Otocinclus this evening and, what should I find but many miniature Otos on the glass/filters .
I counted six for sure & there are plenty of places for more to be hiding.

I grabbed my camera and took a few pics see below...
Also included are a pic or two of the parents & tank taken in the recent past.
I saw courting behaviour from the adults last week, but didn't see any eggs so didn't think much more of it.
The fry are perhaps 5mm long and I don't see a yolk sack, so I imagine they must be a couple of days old.
I've had the adults about two months. They were in reasonably good shape when I got them, not exactly fat, but certainly not wasted & they all settled in very well with no losses to date.
I offer them gourgette, carrot, spinach & don't have much trouble growing algae for them..
The shrimp, by and large, seem much more interested in the veg than the Otocinclus are.

Tank details are:
Size 30Litre (prob ~25Litre after displacement).
temp 26 (degrees C)
set up for 18 months or so (though Otos were only added two months ago).
pH 7.0
KH 4 degrees
GH 6 degrees
40% water change weekly with slightly cooler (tap) water.
2 x internal power filters.
Lots of plants.
Ferts (from powder), (diy) co2, way too much light. -> enough algae to keep them busy.

Fauna:
3 x Amano Shrimp ( C. Japonica)
5 x (adult) Otocinclus (sold as Affinis). 2x Female 3 x male
Indeterminate number of fry

I guess getting fry is one thing, turning them into adults is another. ...
We shall see.

Martin

Fry on glass:


Fry on filter casing:




The Tank.


Adults:

[andywoolloo]

wow...amazing!!

[Mike_Noren]

5 x (adult) Otocinclus (sold as Affinis). 2x Female 3 x male

First of all: congrats!
While it isn't unheard of that vestitus-group Otocinclus reproduce in captivity, it certainly isn't common!

Second of all: Those are Otocinclus vittatus (or, far less likely, Otocinclus vestitus). All Otocinclus except cocama are sold as "affinis"; I do not know why. The real affinis is a very distinct Argentinian species, extremely rare in the hobby.

[Richard B]

Nice one!!!

[MatsP]

Second of all: Those are Otocinclus vittatus (or, far less likely, Otocinclus vestitus). All Otocinclus except cocama are sold as "affinis"; I do not know why. The real affinis is a very distinct Argentinian species, extremely rare in the hobby.

Probably for the same reason that many shops show Peckoltia vittata for Panaque maccus - some popular aquarium books have the right picture but the wrong name. My guess would be that something like Baensch Aquarium Atlas has a O. vittatus picture identified as O. affinis.

And of course all the lesser hobby books just copy the "better" ones anyways when it comes to ID's.

--
Mats

[torbanite]

Hello again,
Couple more pics of the fry below showing them from above/side on.
Tricky little devils to photograph, these were the best I could manage.
The one in the second photo looks to be sporting a tiny "poop trail", so it seems they are finding enough to eat.

5 x (adult) Otocinclus (sold as Affinis). 2x Female 3 x male

First of all: congrats!
While it isn't unheard of that vestitus-group Otocinclus reproduce in captivity, it certainly isn't common!

Second of all: Those are Otocinclus vittatus (or, far less likely, Otocinclus vestitus). All Otocinclus except cocama are sold as "affinis"; I do not know why. The real affinis is a very distinct Argentinian species, extremely rare in the hobby.

Thanks Mike. Yes, I rather doubted the shop's description. I've pored over the Cat-e-log several times since acquiring them but can't point to any species and say "that's the one".

I think I'll take some convincing that they are

Otocinclus vittatus

though.
Vittatus seems to have a prominent white band above the black lateral stripe, which my fish do not have.

Otocinclus vestitus

looks closer to the mark, though you say this is less likely (presumably because they come from an area not often exported from?).

Whatever they are (I'll settle for Otocinclus sp.) they are industrious, entertaining and attractive wee fish. (and I've got more of them than I started out with!


Martin

[andywoolloo]

it's just amazing! Keep the pics coming! What do you feed yours besides algae from the tank and plants? The adults I mean?

[JO C]

well done they are so cute

[racoll]

Otocinclus are a nightmare to ID.

Mike, I'm a bit confused. Your pictures in the cat-elog of O. vittatus are entirely congruent with the photos of O. vestitus in Wels Atlas I. I have absolutely no doubt they are the same species.

I can find no pictures in the cat-elog of the species shown in Wels Altas I as O. vittatus, with the distinctive vertical cross band on the caudal peduncle.

Any ideas?

P.S. congrats on the breeding by the way.

[torbanite]

Keep the pics coming! What do you feed yours besides algae from the tank and plants? The adults I mean?

I make a sort of vegetable kebab on a stainless steel skewer & push it into the substrate. You can see it on the right of the picture of the tank in the first post. I use defrosted gourgette, carrot or spinach & remove it after 24 hours.
They graze on the veg, but appear to prefer algae if it is on the menu. Luckily for them, growing algae seems to be a minor talent of mine .
The juices from the vegetables tend to gunge up the filter media very quickly, so I run two filters and clean them alternately.
Two filters also increases water circulation which helps discourage several types of algae which the fish/shrimp don't/can't eat.

Once a week, I add a *tiny* amount of sinking pellet. The Otos don't react, the shrimp go do-lally over it.

Anyway, couple more pics...
Second one is a 1:1 crop of the area indicated on the first.
The little guys seem to roost on plant leaves just like the adults.
The plant is H. Polysperma & is unstoppable.. Every week I prune the stuff to within an inch of its life, but it just bounces back.
(I think it is actually banned in the southern U.S.).

The third photo is one of the adults. They can't shift the green spots, but seem to relish the threads of green you can see.

Well, between (proper) football, Formula 1, several aquaria in need of maintenance, domestic chores & the fact that the sun is shining, I think you've all heard the last of me for a wee while..

Martin

[bronzefry]

Really nice job! The fry are looking healthy and their parents have nice, round bellies. Whatever lighting that is, it helps create that nice algal growth. I have some sort of Otocinclus species in my 75 gallon tank. They never seem to match any pictures, either.
Amanda

[torbanite]

Hello again,

A couple new pics taken Fri. 13/6 below.
The fry are less in evidence than they were. This may be because of losses, or simply that they are well concealed in the jungle (It can take me a good half hour to spot all the adults, never mind any fry).
However, I eventually managed to get a fuzzy picture of a fry lurking among the plant roots.

They must now be about 12 days old. The colouration on the head is becoming more like that of the adults and they are a wee bit bigger, maybe 9mm. Their fins are also now developed although you can't really see that in the picture.

If there are any fry still around this time next week, I'll perhaps start allowing myself to feel hopeful for their prospects. If not, I'll be disappointed but not surprised.
It took me several attempts to find a method that works (for me) with Corys - so I expect to have to go through a similar learning exercise with these guys.

The adults certainly seem to be finding enough to eat if the pile of poop under the resting adult in the second picture is any indication. So, I can only hope that the fry are also eating well.

Martin

[torbanite]

Slightly better pic.. (the invisible fins are due to my incompetence as a photographer. It does have them, honest

Martin

[andywoolloo]

amazing!

[Mike_Noren]

Otocinclus are a nightmare to ID.

Mike, I'm a bit confused. Your pictures in the cat-elog of O. vittatus are entirely congruent with the photos of O. vestitus in Wels Atlas I. I have absolutely no doubt they are the same species.

I can find no pictures in the cat-elog of the species shown in Wels Altas I as O. vittatus, with the distinctive vertical cross band on the caudal peduncle.

Any ideas?

Well...

The original description of vestitus is poor and Schaeffer suggest that to distinguish it from vittatus you have to see if there is a posterior field of canal-bearing plates, a character very difficult to see even under a stereo microscope.

To make matters worse, the lectotype for vestitus is in poor condition and in the redescription by Schaeffer it looks as if the second specimen, which Schaeffer partly bases his description on, may not be not the same species (it has completely different head shape and eye size). This might help to explain howcome vestitus appear to have a distribution consisting of three populations in three different drainages thousands of kilometers apart.

For what it's worth, according to Schaeffers caudal pattern and lateral pigmentation is the same for both species.

That said, I too have noticed that there is a lot of variation between vestitus/vittatus type fish. Partly that is to be expected given the enormous distribution of vittatus, but my non-expert suspicion is that vittatus is not a single species but a species complex, and vestitus is the name given to two or three different species in the vittatus complex.

For comparison, Schaeffers images of vestitus:
http://mikes-machine.mine.nu/temp/idify ... aeffer.jpg
And vittatus:
http://mikes-machine.mine.nu/temp/idify ... aeffer.jpg

EDIT: I forgot... I counted six posterior canal-bearing plates on the fish I photographed for the Cat-eLog, so it is definitely not a vestitus, whatever else it might be.

[racoll]

Great. Thanks for "clearing that up" Mike.

[N2Biomes]

Congrats on the spawn and the amazing photos! I have a small colony of otos (about 10), not sure of the gender ratio. The tank they are in has similar parameters to those you listed, although not as many plants. Unfortunately, I've had two females die in the past several months, both eggbound (at least I found them full of eggs with no visible marks or disease indicators -the other otos are all in great shape). I've started doing WCs with DI water to lower TDS, hope this is the trick. Thanks to natural sunlight on the tank, it grows an abundance of algae on the walls too.

Keep those photos coming, please -the fry are just so cute!

[torbanite]

Hello again,

Well, still haven't managed to kill them all! Some pics below...

I've started doing WCs with DI water to lower TDS, hope this is the trick.

Sorry to hear of your losses but good luck with spawning them.. Breeding tips from me are probably of dubious value but, on the occaisions where I've seen courting behaviour from these fish, it has been in the day or so after their weekly water change.. so it may well be a trigger for them.

I don't know what a 3 week old Oto is supposed to look like, but this is what mine look like... Certainly growing, but I don't think I'm going to win any prizes for speed of growth.
However, "slowly but surely" is much better than some of the alternatives, so I'm resisting the urge to shovel food in to the tank - especially such a small tank ...




A close up of an adult's nostril. Not all that relevant, but interesting. (I thought)..




Martin