pleco death mystery

[Overawed]

I lost my oldest Pleco yesterday :(

Found him floating upside down with an exploded belly. The wound was so bad I had to put him out of his misery.

My wife noticed erractic behavior from him a few months ago. At feeding time, he would float upside down on the surface eating the fish food. I knew that was dangerous, but did nothing to prevent it except add a few more algae discs. The night before he died, he was feeding on a disc.

I am guessing he got too much protien in his diet.

[jonah]

Sorry about your pleco. I don't know what would cause that, but I was wondering if you had any driftwood in the tank for it to rasp on. It's my understanding that they need wood to help their digestion (roughage). I had a pleco that lived with oscars and I'm sure it had more protein than normal, but it never got sick.

Hopefully some catfish expert will jump in here with some ideas about what happened.

[Overawed]

Hi Jonah

I actually took the driftwood out a few months ago. This particular Pleco payed the driftwood no attention at all and has always been up near the surface sucking on the glass.

I will put it back in, as the two surviving Plecos might need it.

Thanks for the advice! :)

[merlyn2221]

:cry:

I was very sorry to hear about your pleco. I love those beauties and have had many in various tanks over my years of fishkeeping. I do know that they can sometimes live for several years. I have a friend who has now had his for 5 years. It is just a common pleco, about 14" long, that lives in his tropical 75 gal. tank.

It sounds like some internal bacterial infection did it. I had a pair of gouramis once who had internal bacterial infections and their stomachs and intestines literally pushed through the abdominal wall. I did smears to discover what they died of and took the slides to a friend of mine who is a marine biologist. I called to ask what would cause this in a pleco and she said that frequently catfish and catfish types are prone to get tuberculosis, which she said might have caused some of the symptoms you described. She wanted to know if you had recently put any new additions in your tank, either fish or plants, because (as I am sure you already know) they can bring the disease into the tank. She also asked how your water conditions are, but I am sure you probably already checked that. My friend suggested that you might make slides (if that is still possible) and take them to a vet or biology dept. at a local college/university to have them analyzed, that is if you don't want to assume it was some type of bacterial infection.

Overall, I am sorry about your pleco. Hope this will be of some help.

[thmandan22]

hey i was wondering about my plecosumus, got him about 2 weeks ago on a deal(50$) with the fish tank a albino oscar stand fish 29gal.every thing blah blah blah.... any way is it normal for a plecostomus to chang from a black color to a brown color i think hes trying to camo himself becuase the gravel it about the same color he is changing. every day a a little more brown shows up (especially if i leave the light on during the day, its by a window so it gets natural sunlight through the curtains)hes 10inch is it normal for him to change color??
thanks . :?: :nervous: :nervous: [/img]