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Hello everyobdy.
I had 3 O. cocama. Some months ago i discovered one of them was a female: she started getting bigger and with yellow eggs visible in her belly. After 2 day she was so big she could not move normally, with eggs-layer (i don' t know english words for that part that put eggs un the substrate) extroflected.

Well i decided to try do somethin, it was a clear sign of agony, she was breathing so fast laying on the ground and i squeezed gently her belly, 6-8 eggs came out but she died. Last week the secon one did the same thing, and i am looking now at my third and last cocama getting bigger: 3 gorgeous fishes died because of a eggs-keeping...

it makes me really angry because of my bad luck and the loss of a fish that is very rare in Italy and also has very interesting pattern... nobody knows why they died instead of laying them somewhere? there is no way to do something?

Hey,

imho the problem is not eggs but something else. Sounds like you have 3 females - they should be able to lay eggs by themselves if they could not hold back anymore (they definitely would not kill themselves, animals are not humans and first of all they will fight for surviving at any cost - no way of any animal commiting a suicide) - it is normal and pretty common if everything except presention of horny male is O. K.

So I would check everything from a start. Water parameters (Ph, Hardness, No3, No2), feeding (maybe diet is totally wrong), other tank mates (maybe your girls were stressed very much) - everything may be important.
Zeba Otos are still rare and not common in hobby so they are much more delicate than any other more commonly breed in aquarium fish.

Don't give up - this is a great challenge when you try a rare fish - everything may happen. You know experience is something you get just 1 second after you needed it .

Regards.

firt of all thank you for the answer...

well i know they should try everything to keep themselves alive... but i've thought the problem can be that they die for the costipation and pressure on the body's parts (stomach, heart and so on) cause in few sdays the get huge and it is not normal in eggs production. It seems that from a moment to another they get totally full. I am not an expert but i have the experience to recognize that this way is not normal... ouf..

The water has alwayb been around 6/6-5 pH, low hardness and with the minimum in NO2/NO3... their tankmates are satanoperca that are very pacific, O. vittata, L066, L262 and a Sturisoma, and corydoras... but their lives have always been pacific and i feed them all with pellet for plecs, corys and i've always left a fine ampunt of algae on stones and similar for otos.. and they've been with me for a lot of months so i can say they are healthy...sigh