Though they did arrive with nice, fat tummies. 
Carolinaspecialtypets also responded to my want ad, after I had ordered from waterlife. Since I wanted to try to breed them, I picked up some more from them (6). This batch ranged from looser stripes to broken ones, like the photo that's on the top row, 2nd from the right of the cat-e-log. These were obviously recently imported, as they were pretty thin and just about decimated the zucchini I put in their tank! After 5 days they're still all alive, and thankfully looking more plump. Even with the spots/broken stripes they are still nicely patterned IMHO.
Right now the 2 populations are in different community tanks, but I wanted to attempt to breed them (to be honest, closely monitor a 'breeding' tank and maximize the chances of survival of any fry they care to produce!) and was wondering if it's acceptable to mix the 2 populations, given the obvious pattern differentiation.
Also, I'm currently working on 'farming' algae (on slate pieces) in a 2.5 gallon 'nursery' tank (for endlers fry I recently recieved) and in containers under a plant light in the basement. With this, zuchinni, seaweed strips (they appear to like those as well) and algae disks (I've seen them munch on those every now and then), how many would I be able to maintain in a heavily planted 15 long species tank? Would it be best to do water changes twice a week or would 25-30% weekly still be ok even if I could get all 9 in with proper feeding?
I know there isn't much out there in the way of info for oto breeding, but any tidbits on breeding/species tanks for these guys would be helpful.
Thanks!