# Parotocinclus sp. "Peru" ?



## garfieldnfish (Sep 25, 2010)

I had parotocinclus britskii before. Very hard to keep alive. Parotocinclus, like otos, you need a few to keep them happy. One by itself will have an even worse chance of making it. I was told to keep them in a black water tank. However, mine did not live long.

www.planetcatfish.com has some info on them. But I could not find anything for sp Peru.

I just did a search for them in the German Forums and they list paraotocinclus sp Peru as similar to britskii, however, coming from a different region and therefore not classified as the same, as few fish have a range of that size in the wild. (That is how it was put there). They also concluded that, like britskii, these fish are extremely hard to keep alive and almost without exception die within the first 3 months, most likely because it is unclear what exactly it is that they eat. Even in an established aquarium, which could well be the reason they don't make it. I never saw mine eat anything I added to the tank. They appear to eat microorganisms off of driftwood but it is unclear what it is exactly that they require. The German consensus it that a fitting prepared food has not been made for them yet. 
P/h 5.5, temps 31.5 C (around 90F) but another site lists the temps as a little lower but still in the upper 80s. My tank was not that warm, so temperature might have been an issue as well. The second good site I found

http://books.google.com/books?id=iA...gK#v=onepage&q=parotocinclus sp. peru&f=false 

only addresses the britskii but according to that site, feed them copious amounts of vegetable matter and artemia nauplii.


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