I think my oto is pregnant?

captmicha

captmicha

Le tired.
Dec 6, 2006
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Maryland, USA
She (if in fact it is a she) has a really swollen stomach and I can see some orange in there, at least I thought I could. She chased away one of the other otos. I have three. She's the largest one I have, even though I bought them together.

Does that sound pregnant? I put her and her two guys in with my cherry shrimp and then, afterwards, I realized that that was a bad idea b/c the shrimp always act like they're starving and will go after anything.

So I think I'm going to buy a mesh nursery tomorrow to put into their original tank and put the female in it.
 
if my memory is correct there are no reported cases of otto reproduction outside of the wild. so i would say that your otto is not preggers...ottos, when healthy, should have really fat lil tummies.

re-acclimate your otto back to the original tank

-chris
 
The females do grow larger than the males. A few of us have had females which seemed to be very full with eggs. I even caught all of mine, took them out and put them into their own smaller tank to wait for spawning.....and wait....and wait..... My otos were not very happy to have been relocated out of their 55G planted tank, and it was very difficult to get them to eat supplemental food. Lost one when it jumped out of the tank onto the kitchen counter. So I placed them all back into the 55G tank so I didn't lose any more. There, if they spawn, the sidthimunkies will be slurping those eggs down as soon as they are released from the female. Your female will not be happy in a mesh nursery for sure, I wouldn't do that. And she needs the males to be with anyway in order to fertilize her eggs.
 
coach_z said:
if my memory is correct there are no reported cases of otto reproduction outside of the wild. so i would say that your otto is not preggers...ottos, when healthy, should have really fat lil tummies.

re-acclimate your otto back to the original tank

-chris
Click to expand...

wellllllll.....not exactly......:cool:

Check out this thread:
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=190066

Definately do not move them. And don't seperate the female from the males.
 
I've had my ottos spawn before tpp. Technically, your otto isn't pregnant. She doesn't carry live babies in her. Instead, she could be gravid. They lay eggs on plants and on the glass if I remember correctly. If she does lay eggs and they hatch good luck raising them. I wasn't able to keep my babies alive. Good luck!

Here are pictures of my babies.
http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79897&highlight=Otto
 
"pregnant" is the wrong term; as explained above, there are no fertilised eggs or babies developing inside the female; the whole development process takes place externally.

Consequently, you do need to keep the males with the female. They're not birds; they don't mate and then lay fertilised eggs later.
 
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I meant gravid. That term was on the tip of my tongue so I just wrote pregnant instead. Does anyone have a pic of a gravid female?

She looks like this: http://images.google.com/imgres?img...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=lfO&sa=G&um=1.

I'll try to get a shot of my own female but my camera isn't great and I'm not a great photographer.

I can always put all my otos in to a ten gallon that I already have set up. I just have no heater for it. I'm broke so I've been putting off buying one.
 
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