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Hi All,

has anyone seen any aggression issues with L-204's? I bought a wild colony of 5 and have had them about a week now. They've looked fine all week and this morning one of them turned up looking like it was run through a mill. it also looks pretty thin like maybe the others are not letting it get to food. I seperated it immediately to a 'peaceful' tank and the guppies decided he looked like lunch (no crap), so i had to totally isolate him. not sure how he will do at this point. I thought it might be a male territorial thing, but i have not found anyone one the net that talks about that problem with them. His fins look beat up and he has a lot of red splotching all over him (looks like bruising or worse). any expertise in what is happening or how to nurse this guy back to health would be appreciated.

thanks
mike

you might have just got a weak one
couple of question's
1. how long had the shop had them in
2. did they quarantine them?
3. have you given them enough places to hide, i mean are they fighting over cave's?

Kev

i bought him from a dealer on aquabid. he had them for a couple weeks and they were feeding well in his shop. beyond keeping them for a few weeks before sale, i don't think there was any specific quarantine regimine. i've set up the tank with lots of cover using lots of slate to make nooks and crannies, but no sealed off caves. there is one large chunk of driftwood and 2-3 smaller pieces around. it was suggested to me that the driftwood might be a teritorial marker for them and maybe i should get some more. they are in a 29 gallon in a quiet part of the house.

he didn't make it through the morning. i keep thinking the red i was seeing must have been from the beating he took and was internal bleeding, but i'm sure i remember fish not having hemoglobin in their blood, so i know that's silly.

The red you are talking about COULD be a bacterial infection, it's rather common especially in wild caught plecos, and a change of enivornment often seems to cause the outbreak of such infections. Usually they will die within a few days after the outbreak. Perhaps this is what caused the death of your fish?

Hi,

i have a colony of 8 L204 for about 2 years and they are very territorial and agressive towards each other.
You should always get lots of hidding places for all of them, and you should be okay.

On the other hand, in two years of fighting i never see red in them, i think they have som kind of bacteriological disease, you might try to raise the temperature to 30ºc.

Or try Melafix?

thanks guys,

its all for no good though, because they lasted about a week and the last of them died yesterday while i was at work. i had the same aweful luck with l-260's too. i don't have any trouble getting bristlenose to live, but these guys have me stumped.

i didn't get any more red on the other 4 though, they just started dieing a shortly after the first one. this is all very demoralizing.

What's your water parameters? Nitrate, nitrite and ammonia? pH, hardness?

Also, are you gettting these fish from a reputable LFS? I've found from experience that there are some shops that have better fish than others... This is not just how the shop keeps the fish, but also what the importer/wholesalers are doing to make sure the fish are in good condition when they reach the shop and eventually the end customer. A good importer will keep the fish under quarantine for at least a month, treating them with deworming medication and make sure they are eating. Not so good importers will "cheat" on those steps and this leads to poor quality fish for the us, the end customer.

If both the L260 and L204 came from the same shop, I'd say stay away from that shop and try someone else...

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Mats

My nitrate and Nitrite are very low (or were until things started showing up dead), the pH is around 7.6-7.8 hardness is pretty high around 250 GH. I have a whole house resin filter and that's as low as i can get it. I've found accounts of both of these fish being kept in similar parameters, so i thought everything was going to be ok when i got them.

I got my 204's and 260's form seperate dealers on aquabid. The guy that sold me the 260's is pretty questionable. He gets a lot of stuff from Germany (not a knock on Germany, it's just that i have no idea how many times these fish have been shipped and how recently), so I'm not sure if they were hormone bred or wild and I didn't get a very clear resonse on how he quarrantines, but I'm guessing it isn't for very long. I originally ordered 5 260's and 5 botia angellicus for $180 shipped. He screwed up the order and I got 2 l-260's and 8 botia. Within a week i lost half the botia and both 260's. He committed to fix the order but never got any more 260's in, so i worked out something from his current stock and got 2 syno. shouboteni (sp?) and a syno angellicus. Well, those guys are doing fine, but i never see them. i kinda feel screwed over that one.

the l-204's came form another dealer on aquabid and he had the fish for a while, confirmed they were feeding and confirmed they were wild caught. they looked fabulous when i got them, so i had high hopes. i was even convinced they were eatign well because the food was always gone in the morning. I had a swarm of lemon jake fry in there too, but i doubt they could have eaten that much in addition to their regular feedings.

thing is, we don't have many LFS in Indianapolis and when something cool comes in you have to get it quick or it is gone, so there is not much advantage to using them. none of the stores are very big so there isn't much in the way of quarantine going on. i got some l-34's from the best LFS here a while back and have fingers crossed every time i look in the tank, but they are doing great.

Yeah, I'm happy that I live where I do, as we have plenty to choose from when it comes to aquatic shops. I can get to at least four within half an hours drive, and that's only counting ones that I'd like to shop from, not ones that I'd rather leave well alone...

Your water parameters sound OK for these fish. Yes, the water is hard & alkalic, but I'm keeping similar fish in my tank at at least that pH and I'd be VERY surprised if my hardness is less than 250 ppm (I'm pretty sure you haven't got concrete comming out of your taps, which a 250 GH would indicate. Multiply by 0.056 (or something like that) to get GH from PPM, which would put you on 14GH. Hard, that's for sure, but not really bad).

Of course, if these fish where kept in very soft (e.g. RO) water previously, they may have become a little bit shocked by the difference.

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Mats