Otos and temperature flux?

[bethyMT]

I lost one of my 7 otos today. Found him/her this morning, stuck in the elodea.

Other than just being delicate fish, are they particularly susceptible to any tank temperature fluctuations? I have been having crazy amounts of trouble with heaters since the hurricane hit and caused lots of power outages, both brief blips and longer ones. The heater I had was not working after that...I'm afraid to admit it took me five days to realize how bad it was (down to 72F). The new heater that replaces it, which I hate, does not have an accurate guage on it, and the tank just can't get above 76F. I cranked it up and am watching it like a hawk. Piece of crap. Yes, it's rated for above my tank size.

Anyway, would that temp difference over that period of time seriously hurt the otos? The rainbows, gups, and tetras are all OK as far as I can tell, and the other otos are eating and look well.

Yeah, bad fish mom. Not noticing the heater wasn't working. Stupid always-cold hands that can't register temperatures.

Anyway, thanks for your .02!

[madagascariensis]

I don't know what might have caused the oto to die, but I doubt that it was the heater. A sudden temperature Swing might be, for instance, doing a large water change with significantly colder water, but a heater malfunctioning and the water cooling gradually a few degrees over a course of hours does not seem sudden to me. And 72 degrees is not at all that bad. I have kept otos at 72 degrees myself without any issues whatsoever. If I had to guess, I would think that the power outages may have damaged your biological filtration, resulting in water quality issues.

[bethyMT]

Thanks madagascariensis!

Well the power outages ranged from a second to several hours long, but not enough to seriously impact the bb, I think. Everything was wet, albeit cold when the power was out for several hours. But that's something I didn't think of...my ammonia was 0 again yesterday, so if there was a mini-cycle, I didn't catch it (darn it). But there were several water changes in between then and now, so maybe it was slight.

What I am seeing is that some of the otos have nice round bellies and a couple do not, even though I see them all eating...while I don't know why this is, I'm interpreting it as a sign of health.

And, I was have trouble all the time finding all seven of them. Now that this one is gone, all six are easy to find and active. So, maybe this one just wasn't going to make it and was hiding out prior to it's demise.