buddies

The two little otos in Oliver's tank have started hanging out together. It's so cute to watch them follow each other up and down the tank sides, resting and feeding as a pair. I wonder if they are different otocinclus species (or subspecies?) one has a mottled gray back and spotty/broken midline stripe- the other is a more even gray, its stripe a clean line.

The single oto still looks okay in the forty gallon- his fins are clear and even, his skin nice texture, his belly round- but not too happy. I think he's lonely.

I put a zucchini slice in each tank yesterday. The barbs nibbled bites off for part of the morning, then lost interest. The black kuhlis were all over it, they liked to slide underneath, lie on their backs and eat from the underside upside down. It took a while for the striped kuhlis to discover it, they came over for a little while but not as enthusiastic as their bigger cousins. I left it in all day hoping that after dark the lonely oto might find it, but he never did. (My two striped kuhlis are looking a bit better- one is still too thin, but both seem to be growing their barbels out again. Albert's were so short it looked like worn off completely, I was concerned. Some folks online say its sharp substrate edges that cause the barbels to disappear, others that its just poor water quality...)

In Oliver's tank it took half the day for the smooth-striped oto to find the zucchini. Oliver himself saw it right away and kept slowly circling it, inspecting, taking curious nips but never wrenching off bites to eat like Pinkie used to do. When one of the otos finally found it and started nibbling away (yay!) Oliver glided over and the oto abruptly moved off. He hasn't gone back to it. But I did see him eating, so I plan to keep offering zucchini and other greens a few times a week, to supplement their diet and know what I can feed them if the algae runs out.