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Last week I bought 3 L10A red lizard plecos for my planted tank. Apparently I didnt researched enough, because one of them started to 'flip over' when i started the acclimatization routine with my tank water. I immediately replaced the water with my non-planted tank water and the fish went back to normal. After searching for couple of days on net, i found that these fishes does not do good in high nitrate water. My tank water always has 15 - 30 ppm of nitrates. I could not find any other reason other than this. I do drip acclimatization and has never had a causality.

By the way, here are my tank parameters.
75 gallon heavily planted.
High light, 4x54W T5HO lights.
CO2 injected, approx 15 to 20 ppm of co2
nitrates 15 - 30ppm
phosphates - 5ppm
other fishes - 4 dwarf gourami, 10 celestial peal danios, 6 zebra danios, 7 cories, 3 platies, 2 cherry barbs and lots of shrimps and snails.

Before i return the fish, i wanted to get suggestions from you guys from here who keep red lizards. Is my tank water unsuitable for them? Is there any way I can keep them?

Hi all,

i found that these fishes does not do good in high nitrate water. My tank water always has 15 - 30 ppm of nitrates

It must be a water issue, but my suspicion is that this isn't a nitrate issue, nitrates at this level aren't toxic to any fish, the problem is normally that elevated nitrate levels relate to a previous ammonia spike, and it is the ammonia or nitrite that has done the damage. Plants preferentially take up ammonia, so ammonia issues are very uncommon in established planted tanks.

CO2 may be more of a problem, personally I wouldn't keep any Loricariid (or any other rheophilic fish) in a tank with CO2. Do you measure your CO2 with a drop checker?

cheers Darrel

I do check my co2 with a drop checker and never allows it to go above limit. As for ammonia, my tank has been running for the past 7 or 8 months and is cycled. Also i checked for ammonia and nitrites but showed nil.