help with a common pl*co

[fish2992]

i have a 55 gallon aquarium housing a number of fishes. 1 oscar, 1 convict, 1 firemouth, 1 blood parrot, a gold and a green severum, feather fin syno, and a common pleco. my question is about my pleco. he doesnt eat at all, and he has yet to grow since he was added. he is about 3 inches long and he has been in the tank for about 4 inches. he is very skinny and looks unhealthy, dorsal fin is very rugged. none of the fish pick on him so i dont think that is a problem. i am using the common gravel substrate and have a stacked sandstone decoration piece with numerous holes and caves to hide in. water prameters are as follows, ph. 6.2 approx, nitrate 20mg/L, nitrite 0, gh 60, kh 60. any help would be exelent. thank you ps. i left off temp is about 78 to 80 depending on the temp of my room

[Frisckey1]

What are you feeding your pleco? Do you feed everyone at the same time?

Your absolutely POSITIVE no one is picking on him, even at night? A ragged fin would indicate fin rot or aggression by another fish. Fin rot sounds unlikely if your keeping your tank clean and nitrates are under 20 m/l all the time. I'm assuming you have no ammonia reading?

Your positive also that its a common pleco?

Does your PH match from the tap to the tank?

Sorry, not much help - I'm just spouting things off the top of my head that are the most likely to be easily ruled out, at least.

[fish2992]

i try and feed him cucumber sticks and algee wafers but he doesnt accept anything. i dont have much alge growth in my tank so he doesnt have much of that to munch on either. i do feed all at the same time and i feed my other kids blood worms, chiclid pellets and sinking shrimp pellets. i have been paying attension to other fish picking on him but have yet to notice any odd behavior. also i assumed amonia was low since i have no real nitrate nitrite problem. yes he is a common plec, i bought him at lfs about 5 months ago for like $2.99. and common pl*co's are all they deal with generally. (which sucks) also the ph is about 6.2 in tank and tap is about 6.7 to 6.8 i would like to have my ph a bit higher but i dont want to raise it to quickly and every time i do raise it with chemicals my water gets cloudy and im forced to do a partial water change. so i have now accepted the fact taht the ph is going to run low. if anyone has any easy suggestions on how to do that i would be open ears i would prefer it to be between 6.6 to 7.0
if you need any more general information i would be more than willing to try and give it best as possiable.
thank you again
ps is there any way to up load an image into this forum with out having the images on another website to reference

[magnum4]

First i would try a few different types of food. How often do you change the water, when you do how often and how much do you change do you use a gravel cleaner?

make sure your common is not being harrased espially at night has it got a few safe places to hide?

plus thats a lot of fish for a 55gallon tank for when they grow up at least.

are you sure your nitrate kit is accurate?

[Fiskars the Whiskers]

I used to have problems with my pH, too. My tap water is about 6.8 but I would use chemicals to lower it to 6.0. I have since then learned that you do NOT want to use chemicals to change the pH! Something Barbie told me to do, which has been incredibly helpful, has been to put a small shell into the tank. The calcium in the shell helps to buffer the pH. Now the pH in my tanks is always about 6.6. So since you and I have about the same pH levels, if you added a small shell to the tank, I bet your pH would stabilize.

[fish2992]

i do a water change close to monthly and yes i use a gravel cleaner, but only vaccum 1/3 of the tank at a time so as not to disturb the biological filtration. usually i change 25% or so, no more than 35%. yes i know that there are alot of fish in it right now but i was forced into adopting the parrot and the oscar but everything is small right now, nothing is over a year old. i couldnt stand to see them being not taken care of by their previous owner and no one else would take them off his hands. i personally hate the parrot but i dont have anything else to do with him. what other food do you recomend? and what type of shell do you recomend, just a typical shell or something special? and how did or do you go about cleaning it to get off possiable bacteria? thank you so much everyone it has been alot of help.

[MackIntheBox]

what time of the day are you feeding the pleco? since you have had him for 5 months he is obviously eating some, just not much.

The best time I have seen in experience with my common pleco to feed the guy is in a low light situation, dim light or darkness is when almost all if not all catfish prefer to feed. Try turning the lights off and feeding him, watch to see if he eats. Try a different brand of algae wafer, he might liek it better.

Whenever I shut the lights off and drop either an algae wafer or a shrimp pellett (especially the shrimp for some reason...) my common will be on it within 30 seconds.

Definitely make sure he has his own place to hide out. The ragged fn does sound lke ther is an aggressive fish in the tnak, you may want to take a weekend night and see which one it is.

hope this helps

[Barbie]

I would have to recommend doing water changes WEEKLY, at a minimum on a tank with that much of a fish load. The fact that your pH is staying low is probably affecting your biological filtration, as ammonia is converted to ammonium, and not toxic to fish that way. It also affects how much biological bacteria will colonize to convert that waste, which would explain a low nitrate level, even with the obvious overstocking.

As was recommended earlier, NEVER modify water paramters in your tank. The swings in pH this will cause are VERY hard on your fish. If you do more water changes, more frequently, your parameters will stay stable. The fact that your water is so soft, will probably require you add a bit of coral or a shell to your tank, in order to keep the kH from being exhausted by the waste the fish put off, and the pH crashing, but water changes will help with that immensely.

The pleco is obviously suffering from the levels of dissolved organics in the water it lives in. If you have a tank you could remove him to, for quarantine, I would do that. Move water with him from the main tank, or the change in parameters will probably kill him. Then start doing daily 20% changes on BOTH tanks, to get your conditions stable, and ammonia and nitrite levels at 0, before adding coral or anything else to add buffering capacity. Soft water is a blessing that I'd love to have, but it's much more difficult to give the fish the stability they need with it, without keeping up your water quality.

Please read through the sticky at the beginning of the forum here for more help. Those parameters it asks for are important to having us be able to help you. I realize you hit most of the high spots, but ammonia levels and size of the fish in the tank would also help us help you

Barbie

[fish2992]

as for right now i dont have an amonia test strip kit. and my fish are quite small all are bout 2" - 3" accept for the oscar who is about 6" and also i was wondering what kind of shell or coral do you use and how do you clean it to assure no harmful bacteria thank you guys and gals soooo much you have been alot of help. my fishes say thank you
p.s. i stayed up late this evening and let my tank settle down for about an hour and a half after the lights went off and then fed my fish in near black conditions. both of my cats ate very well and the pl*co finished off about 3 shrimp pellets and 2 alge waffers. so i believe that feeding time was part of the problem and now i am going to concentrate on my ph ballance to improve the health of my baby. if anyone still has any more suggestions for me to try im still all ears and it would be appreciated. however all the help so far has been very helpful and almost has me overwhelmed with the changes that are going to occour with the maintence of my tank. thank you very much

[Frisckey1]

Water changes will not harm the benefecial bacteria in any way.

The bacteria you need to keep your tank cycled is located mostly in teh filter. If you have a UGF, I'd recommend using caution when gravel vac'ing around the UGF plate, although, your probably due for a cleaning anyway.

I'm in agreement you have too many big fish for a tank that size. Also, weekly water changes are a must. I guarantee you that is what is causing the fin degredation in your pleco.

Likely, as was mentioned your ammoina (if present) isn't very toxic to your fish, so I wouldn't be overly concerned with those readings at the moment. Start off doing smaller water change, daily or every other day. Like 10%. No more. You have 2 issues, 1) your fish are not accustomed to large volume water changes and have adapted to their current water parameters, and 2) your PH from the tap doesn't match the tank. After you've changed out 100% of your water, you can up your water changes to 25-50% weekly. When the fish are better accustomed.

Here's the thing: When water evaporates, it leaves behind organic compounds as well as other dissolved solids that most aquariasts don't test for. Probably can't even test for them all, unless you work at a water treatment facility or something, LOL. When you top off between water changes, your adding MORE of these total dissolved solids to your water, but not removing any of the old ones. After a while, it will build up and lead to 1 of 2 things: sick fish, or dead fish. Its best to do weekly changes, not only to combat water evap, but to keep the water cleaner.

YOu can add shells from the sea, or crushed corals (to the filter) to help stabilize PH, but keep in mind - if you add enough it will effect your GH readings as well. The soft water fish may not enjoy it as much. Start off small, with just a small shell, and if it doesn't have the desired effect, add another. Give it a week or two to change some readings. Personally, I'd be willing to bet...that if you up your maintenance schedule, your water will stabilize on its own, and the PH will better match your tap. The stuff in the gravel that is decaying that your not getting out every week, turns acidic - which in turn effects your PH and KH. KH drop = PH crash. Not a good thing.

Oh, and its definitely advisable to feed your placo his own diet at lights out. Let everyone else eat first, lights on. Then lights out and drop in some tablets for shrimp pellets. He MUST have some algea wafers, too.

Good luck!

[shamgar1]

Everybody here has better information than I can give you. But, one thing you asked that nobody answered was about how to clean the corral or shell to make sure there is no harmful bacteria. Whenever I add a rock or even driftwood, I boil the object for at leas 5 minutes. Maybe it could be a little longer for complete sterilization, but that is what I do.
HTH,
Shamgar

[fish2992]

once again thank you everyone you have been a mass of help best forum in the world

[magnum4]

I think you get the idea of what needs to be done to solve your problems. one thing to add to Barbies advise is to put the suction tubing down the uplift pipe to remove muck from underneath the UG.

In terms of washing shells from salt conditions. bacteria cannot (has never been proven) to transfere from marine to freshwater so do not be conserned, just make sure there is nothing dead inside.

Also consider changing your filter from an UG to a external power filter. As was suspected you must have build ups of anerobic bacteria breaking down nitrate. Looks good on test results but trust me it's one of the worst conditions you can have.

[fish2992]

i am not currently using a ug filter. that was just a speculation. i have a regent 20-60 over that back power filter (from walmart). i started my tank about 6 months ago with a ug set up along with the otb but it led to nothing but problems and was told that it would be a good idea to remove it so i did. and so i can just go and grab a shell from the beach and stick it in my aquarium after i have done all of the water changes and stabilized all of my readings and it will work? i was just concerned with adding polutants from a beach or things of that nature. thank you all again

[Fiskars the Whiskers]

One of my shells came from a late-night run to the lfs in a frantic search for coral. Luckily they had the shells! The other shell I have is a neat shell from the beach. I cleaned it well and tried to pry off some of the little muscle-bit holding the two shells together. (I only used half the shell.) The fish seem to like it and I have watched the cories push very small bits of gravel into the shell with their noses. So I think a shell from the beach would be fine.

[fish2992]

thanks to all of your help, my ph has stabilized and my fish seem much happier. it is now up to 6.7 and my tap is 6.8 so im getting closer to equal. and just wanted to say thanks to everyone on this forum