PlanetCatfish.com

Got a couple of these guys a few weeks ago. I was told they were "chinese algae eaters" but having looked them up,
I suspect they are actually otocinclus (dwarf algae eaters?).

They are happy little fish and I'd like to get some more (my 40 gallon tank could use a few more vaccuum cleaners). If they are indeed otos, I've read that they do best in a group.

Sorry about the shoddy pics - the fish are a bit too small for my camera to deal very well with:







Thanks

HI!

Yeap these are Otocinclus for sure and you surely can add some more...
By the way: they are no Vaccuum cleaner... no catfish are!!!
Cheers
Yann

Excellent, this is good to know. Thanks.

I'll see if I can get some more.

The comment about vaccuum cleaners was related to the green
algae that is getting carried away on some of my rocks - I didn't
mean to suggest that catfish are indiscriminate scavengers <grin>.


Thanks again.

Uh......this store doesnt sound too knowledgable about fish...i really hope you are not buying fish at PETCO or something like that, because they have told me ridiculous information in the past. For example they told me a small melanotaenia lacustrus (they called it a green rainbowfish, and it was quite blue) was a male melonataenia bosemani (one of the most well know rainbows, male's front half is dark blue/purple, back half is bright orange.) So do yourself a favor, go to a real fish store, and what the heck do you mean by vaccum cleaner? Sure oto cats eat algae....but huh?

Hi, Elsie! Your otos sure are cute and happy-looking! Mine likes to hoover all around the tank and she especially likes to balance with her belly fins (I can't remember the name of them! Agh!) on the sides of leaves, gravel, fake tree roots, tec. So cute! I love these little fish.

Hmmmm....

Try owning a Giraffe Cat. and not calling it a hoover!

The pet name for ours was Dyson.

I have mixed feelings about oto cats. They are cute little buggers and sure are liked by takashi amano, but ive had the experience of unexplained initial fatalities. But once they are through the first couple of days they usually are pretty hardy.

Oto cats nor any other fish or creature will rid your tank completely of algae. Good water conditions and plenty of fast-growing plants will keep algae in check by limiting the available nutrients on which algae thrives.

Just my 2 cents...

micahgee wrote:Uh......this store doesnt sound too knowledgable about fish...i really hope you are not buying fish at PETCO or something like that...So do yourself a favor, go to a real fish store...

Actually, this is a "real" fish store, so I was surprised that the fish were that badly mislabelled. However, having looked around on the web, it seems to be a common mistake, as I saw many [what appeared to be] oto pics listed as chinese algae eaters.

micahgee wrote:I have mixed feelings about oto cats.... ive had the experience of unexplained initial fatalities. But once they are through the first couple of days they usually are pretty hardy.

saw an interesting possible explanation on why this might be happening at: http://www.otocinclus.com/newoto.html - related to chemical poisoning to catch them. Don't know if it's true, but it was interesting.

micahgee wrote: Oto cats nor any other fish or creature will rid your tank completely of algae. Good water conditions and plenty of fast-growing plants will keep algae in check by limiting the available nutrients on which algae thrives.

The good water I can provide (or at least try to - we're on a well, so it can be hard to balance at times). The plants - well, the two large plecos were doing a number on them - I ended up with lots of stalks rather than plants. Swapped the plecos for otos and the plants are beginning to come back again.

Thats an interesting article, thanx for pointing it out. Next time I pick up some oto's ill make sure they are quarantined and properly fed. Another article on the page makes me want to breed the little guys. Hmmm.....

Oh and BTW, i dont mean to insult your "fish store" but a chinese algae eater and a oto are pretty diferrent...and grossly mislabeled fish usually means some of the employees dont know much about fish...

Just my two cents...

micahgee wrote:Oh and BTW, i dont mean to insult your "fish store" but a chinese algae eater and a oto are pretty diferrent...and grossly mislabeled fish usually means some of the employees dont know much about fish...

That's what I figured when I started looking at pics of the chinese algae eaters "Those don't look anything *like* what I've got in my tank!"

It could be that the label was old - from the previous inhabitants of the tank, p'raps?

But like I say, if you do a search on the web for chinese algae eaters, it comes up with a bunch of oto pics, which is curious, so it wouldn't be the first time they are mislabelled.

I'm just happy - I've got dinky otos having fun in my tank, not chinese algae eaters which seem like they turn into monsters later in life.