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Hello,
I got this L204 yesterday along with two small L177. They are in the Q tank. There are almost fully grown L235, two golden zebra loaches, some red cherry shrimps and 6 theadfin rainbows in this tank.
It's an established tank with wood and smooth rocks. No ammonia, no nitrites.
Around 1 pm, L204 was fine. At 5 pm, I found her in that sorry condition. I don't know if it's an injury or an infection. It's still alive, but I don't think will stay for long, unless will get some serious help.

I raised temp.in the tank and treated it with Melafix (half dose).
Here are pictures, please let me know what you think.
Thank you.

An update: L204 didn't make it.

Hi catsaholic,
Thats a real shame.
I've never seen anything quite like that, especially in such a short time frame.
It almost looks as though something tried to eat it.
It would be interesting to know what this was.
Regards
Geoff

Hi Geoff,
It did look like an injury to me, but then friend pointed out that in case of aggression, most damage would be done to the tail area. In contrary, here it was a head. Besides, the only larger (slightly) specie in the tank was L235, and I don't think it's capable of aggression.
I tend to think it's some sort of bacterial infection. I would like to know other opinions on how to prevent/treat it since I have other fish in the tank. I did water change and treated the tank with half dose of salt and Melafix. Needless to say, that during this night, I was getting up practically every hour to check on them. So far, so good.

So sorry for ur lost..

I've read somewhere on another forum about it.. its a type of Fungal disease.. and 90% of the time.. the pleco cant make it.. It is also very contagious.... it will spread to other plecos in the same tank.. i'm not sure if metfix can cure it..

here is a disease URL richard b put on a thread before

Thank you for the link. I'm not sure it's fungal, but I do think it's a bacterial infection, or a bacterial infection combined with aggression. This is what I did so far: I separated L235 (the larger fish in the tank) using divider and began treatment with broad spectrum antibiotics. So far so good.

I also think it's a bacterial infection. Whatever it was, that looked really bad and i don't think you could've done anything to save it. Sorry for your loss

There is one picture like this in "The new illustrated guide to fish diseases in ornamental tropical and pond fish" by Gerald Bassleer.

Parasitic + Bacterial inf: Ichthyobodo (costia) + Bacterical infection.