Its times like these....

[Bogwoodbruce]

sorry for your loss but he had some size on him, he looked really nice he was surely a monster fish!!

, He looked so nice too .

Sorry for your loss .

sorry for your loss.

Any pictures of it alive?

sorry to hear that bruce. that's a tough loss :/

Sorry, Bruce.

sorry for loss, he was a real beauty.

sorry to hear about ure pleco man , looked very nice.

sorry for your loss bruce
it might just be old

sorry to hear, but dont lose the war over a loss in battle

First, sorry for the loss.

But it does not look like it was old age to me. You only got it about 2 months ago which is the first sign that is was not. Secondly it seems your tank does not have nearly enough drift wood in tank for a royal that size and the drift wood looks hard. What else were you feeding it? I suspect it was due to dietry problems.

Looks like it was a beast Bruce.

Sorry to hear that, bruce, but it does happen in the hobby.

"Gutted" would be a good way to describe how I'd feel to lose my favorite Royal, too. I really feel for you. There's just no way we can duplicate exactly what a fish gets in the wild. We keep them safe from predators, do our best to give them fresh water and what food we can. But it's not always enough. He was beautiful.

Very sorry for your loss Bruce. It was a stunner. AshDavid has a valid point about hard driftwood. Although before I knew better I had my royal with nothing but mopani for several months with no obvious ill effects. Much smaller fish though. I do not remember seeing pics of your set up but they will go through some driftwood for sure. My 5"er has taken a 5" diameterx16"long piece of driftwood down to about 4" in diameter in less than a year(rough estimate). I have that and a larger piece of mopani on the other side of the tank and it clearly prefers the one softer piece over the mopani.

I could be incorrect on the wood being mopani but it is very dense none the less.

very sorry for your loss, bruce he was beautiful

Tough time, but don't give up, Bruce! Cheer!

Thanx everybody, you have raised a good point there ash, in another tank i have some soft wood and a 8" L-330 and he eats loads and leaves a lotta shavings there is a lot of wood in the tank he came from but like you say its hard mopani, he did rasps at some but not a great deal. Good point but i guess its one of those things i have to deal with i suppose.

 

[imcrystal]

sorry man, he does look nice. id be interested to pics of him alive if you have any?

 

[Bogwoodbruce]

sorry man, he does look nice. id be interested to pics of him alive if you have any?

Ive got a few on some threads ill try and dig em up