newbies

I've got some Otocinclus! Three little fellows. Bought them yesterday. A bit anxious for them, as Otos are notorious for failing to thrive. Apparently (says my online reading) they get easily stressed during capture and shipment, don't eat, the bacteria in their stomach dies off and then when they do start to eat again, they can't digest and slowly starve. Poor things. But these guys have been at the local pet store for over two months, I've been looking at them every time I go in for a while. So I hope they are survivors.

I think they will be happy in my main tank, it has lots of hiding places and plenty of green and brown algae, which they love to eat. But the last time we brought fish home from the pet store it turned out they had disease, so to safeguard I've got the Otos in my small makeshift QT tank for now. It's set up with a heater, sponge filter, some rocks and bridge piece from the home tank, old broken castle decor in the corner to hide behind, for security. The bridge has plenty of green algae on it, but I'm not sure if it's enough and they haven't discovered it yet. I put the bridge up against the side of the tank side, in hopes that when they move up and down along the side they'll find it.  Also a small piece of driftwood, I read that they like to rasp on wood.

Further reading informed me that they prefer cooler temperatures and high oxygen content. (They also like softer, alkaline water but I can't help that. Plus everyone in my area has hard water from the local supply, so if they've already adjusted to that at the pet store, I think they'll be ok here w/the pH). I turned the temp down to 74° and moved in the floating Watersprite plants from the home tank. I don't know if the Watersprite will thrive here- there's no light fixture on the tank, but in the evenings when I use my desk lamp I intend to remove the container lid and turn the lamp on the tank for a good number of hours. Even if the Watersprite fails to grow, I can always replenish it with cuttings off the plants in the home tank, they periodically grow up out of the water surface and need to be trimmed back. And when I use this as hospital tank, I won't want live plants in there anyway.

So. The fish came in yesterday late afternoon. They were awfully pale, could hardly see the horizonal stripe or markings at all, and very pink underside the head. Maybe from stress; this morning their color is much better, the rosy hue dissipated, the stripes showing bolder. They are still mostly hiding in the corner so it's hard to get any pictures. You can just see one here under the castle, and two on the wall behind it.

I'm concerned if they will eat or not. I put in an algae wafer and a few halves of cooked, flattened peas. They haven't found that yet either. This morning noticed the tank had a very foul odor. I could smell it before entering the room. I siphoned out all the waste I could find on the tank bottom, trimmed off all the browning necrotic parts of the plants, and did a 25% water change. The smell is a little better- now I don't notice it unless I'm actually in the room, and it's tolerable. I figure with this small a tank the biological system won't be quite stable and I'll need to do wc at least a few times a week. It might be the algae wafer decaying that smells bad? or the bit of driftwood? If it keeps stinking I'll take out the wood and see if that resolves the problem.