Otocinclus (Otocinclus vittatus)

yoink

Small, peaceful fish that does an excellent job of cleaning algae off the plants and glass. Be careful with larger fish; a quick nip and they could be history. They were responsible for getting rid of my brown algae outbreak.

Kyle

Had an experience of my oto attaching itself into the gills of my 4.5" goldfish which it seems to be sucking the gills of the goldfish and came right out from the mouth once it's done with it's business (3 hrs later). Goldfish seems ill but recovered. Pretty irks...

Evan Ong

Marvelous fish, but apt to die, even after being in settled tank for quite some time.

MD

Great little fish that likes the company of other otos. They seem to cope better in a mature tank with live plants and driftwood. They also like cucumber if it is weighted down on the bottom of the tank. I have 6 and they like to swim with my pygmy corys which have similar markings.

Emma

I bought two of these wonderful fishes and those happened to be a male and a female and now I have 30 of them! These are easy to breed if you know what to do.

Niina

I've had mine since last September, and it seems to be very shy. Since the very first day I've had it in a fish bowl and air pump fitted, otherwise it would die. I am now preparing a 70L aquarium and will move my oto in there... Though it may die once I put in other fishies. Especially bottomdwellers.

Lensley

I had two in my 20 gal planted tank and they were shy and couldn't keep up with the algae. I bought two more and they were suddenly very lively and eating more. Definately keep them in groups to keep them happy and eating!

Cheryl

Otos should definitely be kept in a small shoal (at least 3 fish). If there are enough Otos (1 for every 10 gallons, unless you will feed them extra) they will control algae growth, although if you already have an algae outbreak they don't seem to be making much progress. I have three in my 20-gallon tank and five in my 55-gallon tank. Once they are acclimated they seem to be fairly hardy.

Robert

I have 3 of these little guys in my 29 gal planted tank.They cleaned all of the brown diatom brown algea that seems to appear in newly set up planted tanks (which mine was ). My wife calls them the merry maids because of their cleaning abilities. They are very peaceful and fun to watch.

Ronnie

I have 2 in my 10 gallon which is in the sunlight so my algae problem was bad. 3 days after i got em my tank was sparkling clean and my other fish get along with them really well. Always moving.

dave

Although they are a bit hard to keep, each is well worth the price. I started with two to clean my 10g, after a week one died for unknown reasons. Finally found four more and purchased them. Within four days one side and the entire back of my tank was completely clean. You can't beat that! These little guys are pretty fun to watch. They dart all over the place.

Burks

I just got my first (err.. second) Oto. And after reading all the comments I understand why the first died. I got another the next day. He is vigurous and active. And only been out of the bag for 5hrs has managed to clean one side of my 10gal tank. I could almost not see into half of that side of the tank for the algae. After all of the good reviews with there ppl and their tanks I,m very gald I chose an Oto. I think I will be very happy with this little "Merry Maid".

Elicia Conley

The only (2) fish that have survived through 4 weeks of ph inbalances, kh spikes and all sorts of water mishaps of a total of 15 fish. These are the hardiest, toughest and handiest of fish I have come across so far. I will always spare room in my planted tanks for a few.

55

I can't say enough about these little guys. First bought them when I had a bad outbreak in brown diatoms. The glass was completely clean in a matter of a week. I keep two per tank and rarely do I have any visible algae or diatoms on the glass. Well worth every penny. The trick to keeping these guys healthy is to slowly acclimate them. The standard acclimating technique didn't work well for me. Drip acclimation is the best way I've found to help their survival.

Burks

Very nice fish in a planted tank. Extremely peaceful and shy. One of the few species that can be kept with dwarf puffer fish. They are excellent cleaners but any reasonable tank will not have enough algae to sustain them so they should be fed algae- of spirulina pellets. They will still clean you tank. The biggest problem I've found is that they are very touchy when it comes to changes in water parameters.

Martijn

jaysen

i had a bad experience with mine. i bought 5 and they were sucking onto any fish they could. they avoided algae and just focused on sucking onto the slimecoat of my fish and they die easily out of nowhere. i will stay away from them in the future.

SleepySin

I had initially purchased 3 of these little guys and they were great. They were industrious algae eaters, often swam together and seemed to enjoy one anothers' company. Months down the line, I had brought in a total of 9 oto's, relocated them to our 30g tank and 3 had died mysteriously. If they were harvested fro the wild, I'm actually not surprised that some didn't make it considering how they are usually collected from S.America.

That aside, I've noticed that the ones that we've had in the tank the longest, are a lot less active than the 2 newer ones. They kind of have a reserved corner of the tank where they hang out for a majority of the day, doing very little of anything. When the lights go out though, that's when they seem to come back out and forage for algae.