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My wife called me when she got home and the albino ancistrus sp.5 died. I noticed it had been acting different for the last 2 weeks but the water parameters have been ammonia-0, nitrite-0, nitrate-5-10, ph-7.2, temp.-80-82F. I saw he had a big belly for quite some time. I just thought he was getting plenty to eat. When I pulled him out of the tank tonight, his belly was dark brown to black. Maybe too much protein? An internal parasite? The newest residents are 6 geophagus surinamensis and have been in the tank for 3-4 weeks now. Should I treat the entire tank with any meds just in case? Any thoughts and/or insight would be greatly appreciated.

The too much protein sounds like a likely scenario. What have you been feeding it?

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Mats

I feed frozen bloodworms 1 or 2 days (not consecutively) of the week and frozen brine shrimp the next week 1 or 2 days (not consecutively) of the week. Any day I don't feed the frozen brine shrimp or frozen bloodworms, I feed OSI Vivid Color. Probably twice a month I will feed sinking shrimp pellets or carnivore pellets. There is almost always zuchini or cucumber or sweet potato or squash in the tank.

Thank you for the help matsp.

Sounds like a protein OD to me, don't forget that these fish are veggies with an omnivore streak so the diet should be predominantly veggie with an occaisional bit of protein

I think I ODed him on protein also. I'm a little more watchful of how much high protein food I'm feeding now.

Oh, I am so sorry to hear that, but it is good when you can figure out what went wrong. That is the best way to avoid it in the future, I hate it when I don't know what happened.
I do also know another person who has tons of sp5s, I think you still have my email address, just let me know if you want the info. I'll be going down to see his fishroom in about a month or so, and to pick up some baby zebras, baby vampires, and some sp5s. Tracy

It is not uncommon to have protein-overdose in these fish. As Reginator says, they are herbivores but will eat other food if available. Feed them lots of protein, and not enough fibre, and they will eventually suffer from some form of indigestion, leading to food rotting in the intestine and soon death - in Rift-lake Cichlids this is called bloat, and it's a very similar cause. It's often "helped" by other stress factors [just like us humans will be more likely to catch a cold if we're tired, stressed or have gone without food for some time - the natural defences are lowered...], but from what I can see in the original post from Funky, it's nothing obviously wrong with the setup - can't really comment on what the overall stress level of the fish was - it may have been under some attack by other fish in the tank or something, but on the other hand, even without extra stress, these things can happen...

I would say that this is by far the most common cause of pleco death... At least among the more common species...

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Mats