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pleco mysterious deaths2007-11-24 23:40:09

hi, i have a 55 gallon w/ 1 PLECO,1 knife fish, 1 bala shark,1 catfish,1 dwarf gourami,3 small sunset gouramis, and 4 black tetras. Also, i have a 10 gallon w/ 1 PLECO, and 4tiger barbs.

First my PLECO in my 10 gallon tank began showing symptoms of "weakining" there's no ich or fungus but i've noticed that my white rocks were turning "green" probably algae then i checked my water real quick-(nitrates 20ppm,nitrite-0,alkalinity average,water-hard,and 6.4 PH). However, my pleco died which was 2 days ago after checking the water. Now, my pleco in my 55 gallon showed the same thing, he's weak when i saw him last night, i've had him for more than 6months now. In addition, i've noticed that my pebbles in my 55 gallon were "brownish" and the plastic plants were brownish too, probably algae again. Then, i checked my water-(Nitrates 20ppm,Nitrite 0,Alkalinity-Moderate,Water is Very Hard, and PH is 6.2). Unfortunately my 2nd pleco died unknowingly too. what could have killed them? help me pls.

Answers:

Plecos are pretty hardy, can handle wide temp ranges and parameters. Do you have an ammonia test kit? Try checking that, especially in the smaller tank. Was there enough algae in the tank before they got weak? If there wasn't, that could've brought on an illness from stress/no food, so when there was algae, was too late. They're pretty good about cleaning the tanks quickly, need to have a supplement algae wafers or shrimp pellets as well. Now, I'm no expert on this, but I recall reading awhile back that they don't eat all the algae. I believe that don't eat the brown algae-could be wrong though. I know the little oto cats like the brown algae-diazatom (sp). My guess would be there wasn't enough food. Can try checking this site.