Based on my experience, Oto is good at brown algae (diatom) & Yamato is good at hair algae.
Based on my experience, Oto is good at brown algae (diatom) & Yamato is good at hair algae.
Cheers,
U.K.Lau
errr...Oto looks like a pleco while Yamato is a shrimp
Yamato can be quite agressive at times. Which on a bright side is more effecient as compared to Otos. They work pretty fast too, clearing sites after sites whereas Otos seems to stay at one spot for quite some time... maybe its more detailed. Sometimes I noticed my yamatos are quite blur and miscue on some of my healthy plant leaves or maybe there's some algae on it which they can see....
Otos does the job at a slower pace...but peaceful. I've seen my yamatos playfully chasing after my tetras.
One silly question, does yamato able to clean those hair algae on wall?
Always heard that cherry shrimps are good hair algae cleaner. But mine seem not.
Currently, my filter tubing got brown colour stain. I wonder it brown algae?
Any colourful oto to recommend and where can I find it? So far I only see oto affinis at lfs.
From personal experience... I think OTOs are better algae eaters. I have Yamatos before but they don't seen as good as OTOs. My OTOs are hardworking and moving around the tank clearing algaes on leaves, woods, glass, etc. All my plant leaves and glass walls are sparkling shiny
I don't think both type will clear BBA. They do not have the 'power' to do so...
~| MakE ThE BesT oF EverythinG ThaT LifE BringS TheiR WaY! |~
Different algae eaters consume different types of algae. So correctly identifying the algae before getting the faunas would help in managing your expectations.
The most "colourful" oto is Otocinclus cocama (zebra oto). However, it is much more expensive than the normal otos. If you just want algae eaters to do the job, then normal otos would do.
At the same price, you can get close to a dozen of normal otos instead of a single O. cocama. Besides, O. cocama is supposedly not the easiest of fish to keep.
Otos are generally very difficult to identify, but there are quite a number of species around and some are labelled incorrectly. Here is a thread on how to tell O. affinis apart from the others.
http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum...ad.php?t=29440
They sometimes just look so alike that you would not think twice that they are actually different species.
Indeed very difficult to identify. They look alike except zebra oto. After read those old threads on oto, I'm so surprised that the price of zebra oto could be >10x more expensive than "common" oto.
Different fish/shrimp handle different algae.
Otos scrap algae off surfaces. They are good for flat or very short algae.
Shrimps are good at plucking algae.
Vincent - AQ is for everyone, but not for 'u' and 'mi'.
Why use punctuation? See what a difference it makes:A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.
Just to add...for yamato shrimps you need to get a lot of hungry ones to see the effectiveness at getting rid of long strands of hair algae.
Rob
*** *** *** ***
"Natura non facit saltum"
My Otos like to give my hairgrass blow jobs
I'm back!
Here's some info on algae and algae eaters: http://www.aquaticscape.com/articles...#Prophylactics
koah fong
Juggler's tanks
Remember I have bought 2 Snails known as Nectarine snails (according to shop owner) a couple of years back.
After trying out, Yamato, SAE without much successuccess, I bought them to try out if they could solve my previous tank setup which was infested with BBA.
To my surprise they ate up all the BBA in my 2 ft tank in 3 days !!! I was really impressed and surprised at its effectiveness.
However they have since passed away. They are quite difficult to find in LFS this days.
But there is a down side to them though......that is they deposits lots of egg on the glass, bogg woods and anywhere they have access to.
Bookmarks