L14 Sunken Belly

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T

teqvet

Candiru
MFK Member
Jan 31, 2009
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So I'm at a loss. My l14 eats, for certain. Last night he had eggplant. A healthy portion. The day before he had several xtreme large protein pellets. He has had shrimp. Cucumber. Etc. vast diet. His belly continues to appear as if it is sunken. Every other one of my plecs has a nice fat under side, but the L14. His body looks fine, but is underside is where I worry. I seem him defecate regularly as well.

Thoughts?

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That strange that it still have a sunken belly, if it eat and poop like that. In most case like this it not good and it just a matter of time before it kick the bucket. The belly is so sunken you can see the rib cage, not good.
 
How long have u had him? It can take a bit of time to fill their bellies out if it came from a store or distributor..These places usually don't feed L14 enough for they're active personalities. If he's eating like u say, it's prob just a matter of time
 
What color is the poop? My larger L14 has had a concave belly forever..i'm talking years.. so maybe it will work out for you.
 
Depends what he eats. If it's meaty type some is redbrown. If it's vegetable, green-white. Nothing stringy or suspect though. He looks great tool he does me his belt and then he looks like an orphan. Every one else looks like they over eat.

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1 word. Worms!!! well... two words, internal parasites ....

You typically see this with common plecos that people buy from large chain stores to eat their algae. Most wasted away either due to lack of food after clearing all algae, or from internal parasites.

If it's eating and you are sure that it's eating, and still have a sunken belly like that, it's very likely to have something eating away internally. Quarantine him ASAP to protect him, to medicate him, and give him as much food as possible while not causing the water quality to go down.
 
I also second deworming him. I like to use praziquantel and levamisole separately. I had a 12 inch male that had a really bad sunken in belly. I dewormed wormed him several times. He ate great but I finally lost him after several months. I did a necropsy on him. It was interesting. He was well muscled and organs looked good, but his intestine was much more decomposed then the rest of his body. I think it was more due to the flora of the gut being off and never properly repopulating.
 
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