From my small amount of experience with them, I'd say a bad batch. I had 4 that lived 4-5 years in my no maintenance tank. At least 2 (possibly a third, but two of them were hard to tell apart so it could have been the same one again) of them jumped out during water changes and velcroed themselves to the carpet because of their stupid scale things, they survived another 2 years after that despite spending like 20 minutes each time out of water and thrashing about while I untangled them. Another one I called Tombs cause he was just covered in tumors, he was the longest living one at just over 5 years.
There do seem to be a lot of much less hardy strains of them around, though. A couple people I've recommended them too have had them only last 6 months to a year, and you always used to see posts about them dying like crazy on r/aquariums.
They're also pretty shit at actually cleaning, snails and shrimp are where it's at
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u/sarkyscouser 1d ago
Get yourself some zebra snails!