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No, but Oto's will feast on dead fish, so it's not unreasonable that they'd eat dead tissue from a live fish, if the fish will sit still. Great observation!
The far-southern Apistos (borellii, trifasciata, commbrae, and others) from the Parana-La Plata River basin should do fine with 4 to 5 dGH. The species that are sensitive to excessive hardness are generally the more northern ones from the Amazon and Orinoco basins.
Whatever it is (bacteria maybe), it was likely growing inside his body too, damaging internal organs. If it was just fins he would not have died so quickly.
HCl will lower pH but it won't soften the water. Also, TDS is not a measure of hardness. You might have high TDS and low hardness, depending on which dissolved ions are present. Ca+ and Mg+ are the ions that create hardness.
I think they'd do okay and pretty much ignore each other. Obviously you're not trying to breed Apistos, with barbs and Garra in the tank. Having said that, I once kept a lone male gardneri with a lone male Lamprologus speciosus and they fought much of the time; it seemed to be their form of...
I think they'd do okay and pretty much ignore each other. Obviously you're not trying to breed Apistos, with barbs and Garra in the tank. Having said that, I once kept a lone male gardneri with a lone male Lamprologus speciosus and they fought much of the time; it seemed to be their form of...
Nope. The male attacked the female relentlessly every time I tried putting them together, even after she actively courted him through the glass in her adjacent tank. Female died first -- no obvious symptoms -- then the male a year later, with the typical West African cichlid bloat symptoms.