What Am I doing wrong?

[fishmonster]

I have bought 2 gold nugget plecos from the same fish store and i have lost them both. I beleive i lost the first one to either a fungal infection or over medication. however the second one I have no idea on what i did, I have another pleco in there that i was told was a bushynose pleco and is doing great but i am un sure that I was given a busy nose.

So what am i doing wrong and how can i tell if i truly have a bushy nose pleco. Also i need to know some good Pleco sites to read up on them

 

[Gr8KarmaSF]

The question everybody will ask is, what are your water parameters? get a test kit and figure out whats going on with your water.

Whether its a bushy nose or not? The only way is a picture. You can also google it under images and see if it matches up to yours.

You can also try plecofanatics.com

 

[Nate_N_Nicole]

How long have you had your tank set up for?

 

[fishmonster]

The tank has been setup since september. It origonally had an aqua clear 50 and fluval 2 internal filters. its a 30 gallon tank.

I recently upgraded the aquaclear to a 110 and put the old material into the new filter and had been in there 2 weeks before i had added the pleco. I removed the filter material last night after i found the pleco dead.

Water perameters

7.4 - 7.6 PH
0 Ammonia
.26 nitrites
0 nitrates.

Im guessing the small increase in nitrites are from the removal of the older more usewd filter material.

The tank has the following fish hence the larger filter

6 Black Skirt tetras
5 Neons
5 other tetras
6 Head N Tail tetras
6 panda Cories
2 Fire Gourami's
1 Blue Dwarf gourami
1 Skunk Loach
1 Supposedly Bushy Nose Pleco

 

[Nate_N_Nicole]

Your tank probably had a spike... Due to all those fish!!! It sounds to me like your over populated a little... you have two options let the cycle go through (you may loose more fish) or get something for your nitrites and save a couple while you can good luck

 

[Nate_N_Nicole]

Im guessing the small increase in nitrites are from the removal of the older more usewd filter material.

Correct

 

[fishmonster]

Spike from what tho? That tank had all the fish in there for months before i added the plecos. 2 Fish isnt gonna cause a big enough spike to kill one of the fish and the neons are more suceptable to changes that a pleco is

 

[rallysman]

you could have had a couple of "bad" plecos, or maybe the water from the lfs was way off and not as good as yours......how did you aclimate them?

 

[fishmonster]

24 Hrs after the last reading, 20-30 mg of nitrates and everything else is 0. Ph is 7.6 -7.8 I accimilated them like i do all my fish, leave them floating for about 30 mins then add small amounts of water every 5 mins after that for about 15 mins.

Then I feed the other fish so the new ones can hide and get used to the tank

 

[Hasi]

The fact that there is nitrites in your tank is not a good thing and you could lose more fish.

I think maybe the move of the media into the new filter could of caused the problem. What you could of done is let the new filter run with the old filter still in place for a few weeks and let the bacteria build up in the new filter.

Definitely need to get rid of the spike before any new fish are added as the nitrite will be deadly to newly acclimidated fish who will already be under stress.