[APD] Lost an oto, not sure why.

[Michael Skidmore <mskidmore at alamedanet_net>]

I'm asking this in a plant group since many of you keep oto's , 
probably more per tank than general aquarists do. A post in another 
group was unfruitful.

My  first fish died in a 1 month old 75 long community, planted tank 
- an  Otocinclus  affinis, the bigger Peruvian  variety. They had 
been in about 3 weeks and I have about 1" fish / gal which had been 
doing  okay at first. Other fish are 7 2-3" young discus, 3 SAE's, 5 
clown loaches, 3 amano shrimp, 3 adult broken line tetra- Hemmigramus 
ulreyi, 6 very young panda corys and a 6" Botia longiventralis.

I checked the water chemistry with my Nutrafin/Hagen dropper kits and 
don't see anything too bad (to my newbie eyes after much reading):
p H 7.00
kH 7.8
gH 10.08
NO2 0.3 ppm ?	 (Hagen kit really doesn't work on N)
NO3 5-10 ppm?
NH3 0
Fe chelated 0.1 ppm? Maybe 0.0
PO4  4 ppm
temp 76.1= 24.5 C

I took my water sample over to Albany Aquarium (perhaps the best LFS 
in SF Bay Area)  about 1 week ago and they measured  NO2 = 5 ppm and 
NO3 = 0 ppm on a different kit when I was showing 0.8  on the Hagen 
kit. It is purple, which is not really the expected Hagen  color. 
I've since read online the Hagen's No2 & NO3 kits are very poor. 
After that I added some Aquatech ProBiotic Cleaner Plus to the filter 
intake. Which store owner  said this was the only bacteria product he 
thought was really alive, since it comes from Yosemite to him every 
few months or so. He suggested that to avoid a NO2 spike building. It 
had been 9 days since I added it.

The only dosing I am doing now is 8 ml of TMG daily. My substrate is 
1/2 Profile Aquatic Plant Soil, 1/2 Turface Proleague (kicked up a 
notch with Diamond Black Humic acids and pyrosol) with about 7 lbs of 
worm castings which explains why my N and P are high. The worm 
castings raise the hardness from 5.6 to 7.8 dkH in 5 days of leaching 
due to egg shells in them, I am trying to minimize what I dose. 
Plants pearl like crazy (4 w/g compact fluorescents) and are not 
turning yellow on tips anymore now that I kicked up the TMG and the 
Alternanthera reineckii  is the proper purple color and others I 
can't id are rust/ red color. I have been doing 50% water changes 
each 5 days, I found it  on morning of 5th day.

The one thing I think maybe happened was that it starved? I noticed 
that none of the other 4 otos had fat bellies. I stopped adding New 
Life spectrum wafers about 4-5 days before it died, since I added 
young discus and with the frozen blood worms and live brine shrimp I 
was concerned about over feeding. They otos previously been eating 
the wafers and scanning of the plants for algae which are present. 
The tank is pretty clean overall, there are algae growing on the 
walls of the tank and now I am getting long wavy brown hair like 
algae, but maybe the algae are not what the otos needed to thrive.

Of the other 4 otos, 2 now have fat bellies and 2 do not after adding 
2 wafers in yesterday.

Any ideas?
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_________________________________________________________
Michael O. Skidmore 		 
Alameda CA
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