Mysterious Pleco Illness

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T

Tron

Feeder Fish
Nov 25, 2015
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Hello everyone, I am a new member on this wonderful forum, and I am having trouble keeping my two royal plecos healthy. The two plecos I have are a 9" L330 and a 10" L191. These two normally stay out of each others' way, but a few weeks ago, the L191 started to lose weight and developed a massively sunken in stomach. I took him out and put him in the hospital tank and he appeared to recover. Shortly after, the same symptoms affected the L330. So I put the L191 back in the main tank and the L330 in the hospital tank.

Around this time, the L191 began showing symptoms again, so I treated the whole tank with PraziPro thinking parasites were responsible. After the performing the treatment, the symptoms remain, so I once again swapped the plecos, putting the L191 in the hospital tank where he currently is, and the L330 in the main tank. Depsite treating the L330 as best I could, using API General Cure (because apparently it contains Praziquantel and Metronidazole) and Paraguard, within a few days he began losing weight, and now he won't eat the medicated food I have tried offering him.

I am using medicated food now because I don't want to remove the carbon and have the water quality deteriorate. I am do have drift wood in the tank obviously, but I have been trying to feed him New Era Plec pellets, using Seachem Focus, Metroplex, and Garlic Guard.

My tank parameters are as follows:
150 Gallons
78 deg Faharenheit
0.25 Ammonia ppm
0 Nitrite ppm
0.5 Nitrate ppm

I am perplexed and I can't figure out how to get both of my Plecos healthy. No one at the either of the LFS knows how to solve this problem. I would greatly appreciate any feedback. Thank you for reading and have a fantastic day.
 
I can tell you that your .25 ammonia reading is not helping a scaless fish in this case and may be most of the problem.

Get rid of the carbon....carbon is only good for pulling metals, chemicals (aka the meds you are using) and tannins out of the water....absolutely no uses otherwise.

start doing water changes and treat the whole tank with metro or paraguard, dealers choice as I have no idea what your plecos actually are suffering from besides poor water quality. My guess is your tank is either not cycled or crashed with ammonia readings and no nitrite and such a low nitrate reading.

If you have carbon in the filter while treating you are throwing money at the tank with no point as the carbons pulling the meds out of the water. using paraguard with another med isn't advisable as paraguard is designed as a reducing agent and is completely nullified in the water within 24 hours, as such it may have a reducing effect on your other medications as well.
 
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Linus_Cello said:
Do you have gravel in your tank?
Is it possible that the bacteria needed for the royal's gut flora has been wiped out? Maybe you can get some cheap healthy bristlenoses who can provide the bacteria to the royals?
Also, try posting your question at planet catfish: http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=5

(Sorry, never kept royals; just advice gleaned from various forums)
Click to expand...


I have sand as the substrate, but the hospital tank has gravel. Hmmm. Also, I do have one bristlenose in the tank right now, but he's only 2 inches long.
 
predatorkeeper87 said:
I can tell you that your .25 ammonia reading is not helping a scaless fish in this case and may be most of the problem.

Get rid of the carbon....carbon is only good for pulling metals, chemicals (aka the meds you are using) and tannins out of the water....absolutely no uses otherwise.

start doing water changes and treat the whole tank with metro or paraguard, dealers choice as I have no idea what your plecos actually are suffering from besides poor water quality. My guess is your tank is either not cycled or crashed with ammonia readings and no nitrite and such a low nitrate reading.

If you have carbon in the filter while treating you are throwing money at the tank with no point as the carbons pulling the meds out of the water. using paraguard with another med isn't advisable as paraguard is designed as a reducing agent and is completely nullified in the water within 24 hours, as such it may have a reducing effect on your other medications as well.
Click to expand...


Yeah, I have been having trouble lately keeping the ammonia at 0 ppm. I will treat the whole tank, I just thought that removing the carbon would have a detrimental effect on the water quality. I have both paraguard and metroplex, I'm just not sure which would be better to use. I believe the problem to be an internal infection of some sort, but I'm not entirely sure. Basically, the pleco just looks very malnourished, despite having plenty of wood and food available.
 
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