Tattered pleco fins, On both my plecos.

Jeff23

AC Members
Dec 11, 2004
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I've been watching my fish more closely recently. I have been ignoring them for a while (I kept up with tank maintenance and feeding but I haven't really been watching them or looking closely at them for a while).

The last few days I have been watching them closely and I've noticed that the dorsal and tail fins on both my plecos are tattered at the back edges. It's most noticeable on the gold nugget because of the yellow borders on their fins.

I have a king tiger and gold nugget in the tank and 1 tetra. Both of them have tattered fins. I don't know if it's fin rot or what. They seem fine but the fins are sort of frayed at the ends instead of smooth. The gold nugget has parts of the yellow bands on his fins missing.

They don't seem aggressive towards each other I have a moonlight and I have been watching them at night and they seem to get a long okay. They are in a 29 gallon tank, the king tiger is about 4" long and the gold nugget is just slightly longer at about 4.5" long.

Any ideas?
 
I'd still bet the farm that they are fighting. Way too many fingers pointing in their direction. A 29 doesn't afford a whole lot of territory to pleco types (I had two 5" types in a 55 that bickered constantly, and occasionally went after a synodontis eupterus).

Clean tattered fins isn't caused by any pathogen I know of. Separate them for a month or so and see if the fins heal up. If they do, replace one of them with otocinclus cats (a fleet of them). Plecos can't catch the fast little buggers to pick on them, and otos are as peaceful as you get.
 
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