They keep on dying?

J

jasonskillz

AC Members
Aug 31, 2005
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its strange, like my sucker fish (pleco) like die. my fishes dont bother them at all. the first one i had, i found it on the bottom on as its bones. then the second one i bought, after a month, i found it with its eyes missing and dead.
what is happening?
 
Have you tested your water? What are the levels? Ammonia/nitrites/nitrates I am a newbie but there are a lot of people around here who know tons and tons and thats the first thing they'll ask you! Hope you figure it out!
 
I would v3nture a guess and say your gourami likes to excrete and its more then your current tank can handle. IMO plec's are hard to kill...unless your trying o course
 
I can think of one or two things..

#1 Do you have a place for them to hide? Plecos must feel comfortable in a tank. Many do not like a lot of light. If you can get a tank fixture or two that they can hang under, they feel more secure. They also like a lot of plants (real or fake). It brings down the stress level in the tank. This also reduces the outbreak of ick.
#2 Plecos caught in the wild tend to have more diseases than many fish. If you got them soon after they arrived from the wild (like South America) then they came in diseased.
 
What are you feeding them??? It is absolutely not true that they will just scavenge the left over food at the bottom of your tank and they need more than just the algea growing in your tank.
Mine get Hikari Algea wafers and about every three days they get a zuchinni (skin on...it's their favorite part) and I take shrimp pellets and spike the zuchinni with it. Also many of them require wood in their diet such as a nice piece of bogwood/driftwood.
Here is a good sticky from the bottom feeder section on feeding your pleco's http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46284
 
NorthStar said:
I would v3nture a guess and say your gourami likes to excrete and its more then your current tank can handle. IMO plec's are hard to kill...unless your trying o course
Click to expand...

i am sure my 130 gal can handle my gourami, its still very young if u didnt no
 
are you getting the pleco's from the same place? At what size are they when you get them, and at what size in comparison to the gourami are they? IMO, pleco's are hard to kill too so just trying to deduct possible causes.
 
no i get my pleco from different places. but to comparision wit my gourami, they r nothing to it. the pleco is probably as large as one of its fins. lolz
but my fishes never bother it, they r always pretty friendly to the pleco. im pretty sure my fishes didnt kill it. i think it might have been starvation or something else. :help:
 
Same question mykidsmylife asked, what did you feed your pleco? I have mine for over two years now and it's so hardy that it'd been through so many 'crises' and still looks better and better everyday.
OH and did you call it pleco or pl*co ? ;-)
 
Plecos are very big on spelling and grammar. Proximity to your typing is killing them. :sick:

Do you feed him anything? A pleco might have a hard time competing for food in a tank with fish that are as large and active as the ones he is in with. You could try having a feeding area (like a pipe other fish can't fit in) where you place algae pellets just for him.

The only other reason for the death of something as hardy as a pleco in a tank with other healthy fish is attack. Make sure he has a refuge from your other fish (and from what I've seen of the tank there's nothing in there like that). Fish feel more comfortable in a natural setting, but you have just a bare tank. You could buy some potted plants and put them in there for him to graze on also, that might fix the feeding problem...
 
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