BoSox Fan7

My two otos died in the last week what could happened everything in my tank is fine.

Callum The Cat

i'm sorry i've heard otos are sensitive and will often not live very long

Peace Out Callum!

COBettaCouple

yea, we love how funny & cute they are and they're excellent algae removers, but the tend to be a weaker fish and a lot don't make it 1 month.

jsalemi

Yea, I'm beginning to think I lost one of mine -- I've only seen one of them for the last week or so. The other one was shy, and rarely came out to hang around, but I haven't seen it at all for a while.

Chief_waterchanger

One of three conditions are the root of most reasons for fish to have THAT short of a lifespan.

Otos are a pleco, they are treated the same as others. Transshipped into the states and often go 2 or 3 weeks without food while going through all the shipping to the wholesaler then to individual shops. Most plecos that go without food for 2 weeks have starvation issues. Starvation issues arise because the 'gut fauna' (just like humans have gut fauna) that helps breaks the food down so that more nutrients are drawn from the food dies off due to lack of food. Once that gut fauna dies off it is very difficult to get it reestablished in time to keep them from dying of starvation. (some speculate it is possible to reestablish gut fauna in plecostomus by putting them in tanks with fish that have healthy gut fauna, and as they mouth on the feces of the other fish they speculate it will reestablish the fauna for the plecostomus.)

If that is not the case it is usually the person not providing proper tank conditions for them.

Or disease/aggression gets them.

Under proper conditions they should live several years.

Butterfly

Otos are treated so roughly when they are caught (most are wild caught) it's a wonder any survive.
CWC gave another excellent explanation as to why they sometimes don't survive. It seems if you can keep them alive for a month all goes well from then on. But keeping them alive for that month is the problem. Here is a very interesting article on Otos. Hope you enjoy it.
http://www.otocinclus.com/newoto.html
Carol

BoSox Fan7

Thanks for the posts

Butterfly

Welcome as always
Carol