New pleco just died???

[Kyle_91]

My friend just recently bought two 3-3.5" oscars about 2 and a half weeks ago and have been in his 40 gal tank.
He bought a common pleco about 3.5" long and 2 days later he was dead not moving on the bottom of the tank. - no signs of diseases, algae, fungus, etc.
- i am very particulate on transporting him back from the fish store to my house so i dont believe he was stressed...
Can anyone explain this?

 

[Ghost9001]

Was the tank just set up 2.5 weeks ago?

 

[theunytedone]

if your tank wasn't cycled long enough it could have died from shock.

sometimes fish die randomly IMO.
did the oscars rough it up too much?

 

[Kyle_91]

- yea it was about 2.5 weeks ago
- and the oscars are kinda dirty but they dont do anything to serious to the tank. IMO, its a decent clean tank...

 

[Ghost9001]

The tank was still cycling, the pleco died from shock because of the ammonia/nitrites in the tank

 

[knifegill]

So no ammonia or nitrItes in there, then?

There are several things that could have contributed to the pleco's death. Among the most common are:
Injury during netting or transport.
Old tank syndrome that hasn't yet killed the adapted fish in the home tank but is instantly deadly to new fish.
Extreme differences in water parameters between his old and new water.
These parameters can be healthy differences like a modified pH or higher/lower temperature, aggressive tankmates or things like that. They can also be unhealthy things you should never see in a tank like ammonia, nitrItes or other contaminants from decoration that won't affect scaled fish like cichlids but quickly poison scaleless fish like plecos.

The list of factors is really only limited by imagination, but it's almost always either "Old Tank Syndrome" from too few water changes, or "New Tank Syndrome" from the inexperienced or uninformed fishkeeper not understanding the importance of establishing a healthy bacterial colony before adding the fish.

So test the water for ammonia, nitrIte, nitrAte and pH and let us know the numbers. "Fine" is not a number.