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Tips on feeding otocinclus

...my otos are breeding too, so it must be enough.
Hi @becks

Excellent! I fancy having a go at breeding Otos - perhaps Zebra Otos (Otocinclus cocama). I may purposely cultivate diatoms specifically for this purpose. Trouble is that there aren't enough hours in the day as I always have several projects running in parallel.

JPC
 
I feed my otos blanched courgette, pattypans (a sumer squash my mum grew experimentally which nobody else fancied to eat, otos loved it), kale and other thick leaves like raddicchio. I'm very lucky that I have an allotment so everything is completely pesticide free. They get about 2 portions of veg/leaf a week, they usually ignore it for a day then go to town. I now batch blanch the bigger stuff like courgette and put it in the freezer so I always have something easy to feed and don't have to cook constantly for them.

They also LOVE dried green walnut leaves, and will eat the other dried leaves in the tank too, which I always have in there for habitat + backup food. They're quite fat, a bit like rugby balls, not at all the tiny things I started with, though they haven't bred yet.
 
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Hi @becks

Excellent! I fancy having a go at breeding Otos - perhaps Zebra Otos (Otocinclus cocama). I may purposely cultivate diatoms specifically for this purpose. Trouble is that there aren't enough hours in the day as I always have several projects running in parallel.

JPC
Given much thought to how you would cultivate diatoms? I've been thinking about this too.
 
Given much thought to how you would cultivate diatoms? I've been thinking about this too.
Hi @louis_last

I think I would take a sample of water from one of my friends' tanks at the local aquarist society once the current Coronavirus pandemic is firmly behind us. So, that would possibly be later this year. Then, I would add this water sample to a suitable container, fill with tap water*, place in a well-lit location and wait, keeping my fingers crossed. Oh, and I'd probably add a few drops of plant fertilizer.

* I'd probably test the tap water for SiO2

JPC
 
Don't know how reliable this chap is (Thomas Harbich) but his website makes interesting reading. @jaypeecee


Feel free to tell me if the sites bunkum.
 
Hi @louis_last

I think I would take a sample of water from one of my friends' tanks at the local aquarist society once the current Coronavirus pandemic is firmly behind us. So, that would possibly be later this year. Then, I would add this water sample to a suitable container, fill with tap water*, place in a well-lit location and wait, keeping my fingers crossed. Oh, and I'd probably add a few drops of plant fertilizer.

* I'd probably test the tap water for SiO2

JPC
Was wondering whether you had some method for cultivating diatoms specifically as opposed to other kinds of algae
 
Don't know how reliable this chap is (Thomas Harbich) but his website makes interesting reading. @jaypeecee

Feel free to tell me if the sites bunkum.

Hi @John q

Many thanks for the link to Thomas Harbich's website. It's very interesting and informative. I'm in no position to pass any further judgment on it as this is far from my area of expertise. Sorry if I gave a different impression. On the basis that diatoms readily grow in our tanks without any human intervention, that's essentially the approach I hope to take.

JPC
 
No, not yet!

JPC
Damn. I was just about to link you to a website where I thought I'd found a promising lead on cultivating specifically diatoms - "www.sciento.co.uk". It looks like they've shut down since I posted my first message in this thread though which is a real tragedy. They had some cool stuff available for sale before now but one of the cladoceran species they sold was described as being "easily maintained on a diet of diatoms" which made me think they might have known of some way to cultivate the diatoms.
 
Hi @louis_last

All is not lost. You may find something of interest here:


They have all sorts of interesting stuff. I have bought Roti-Rich from these people before and used it to culture Daphnia, Moina, etc.

JPC
 
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