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I had a build up of green algae in my 44 gallon tank so, despite previous failures of succesfully keeping Otos in this tank, I decided to try again. I purchased three Otos, expecting to be lucky if one lived. After two weeks, not only have all three lived, but they have cleaned almost all the algae off my glass and are now working over the plants and rocks. My fear is that they will work themselves out of a food supply. I have never had luck getting Oto's to pay attention to algae tablets and other fish seem to eat them. Any suggestions for keeping these hard workers well fed? I scraped some algae off of my glass tank lid and put it in the tank today, but this looked more spinach-like in color and texture and I'm not sure it was the right kind of algae for them anyway. Thanks for any help.

Just supplement their diet with fresh veggies and you should be fine.

Yeah, ottos are happy to eat veggies, just like other Loricariids. Things like lettuce (I think), cucumber, and zucchini are great.

You can also grow algae manually for these guys, if you want. Place a tank ornament (or a small rock) in a container with tank water in it, and stick that on your windowsill. After a few days/weeks (I haven't actually tried this yet), there will be a lot of algae in there. Add the rock/whatever to your tank, and your ottos will feast!

I hope I got that right.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Thank you for this help. I will purchase some zucchini or cukes (would probably be good if I ate more veggies too) for the Otos. They have cleaned every speck of algae that I could see before.