my friend woke up today and he noticed his 6-7 inhc pleco had what looked like cataract on his eyes. after he got home from work he said it was floating upsidedown on the top of the tank. it wa still alive but whenever he poked it it would try to swim down and could not go down more than a couple inches plus it could not flip its self right sid up. a couple hours later it started changeing from it's normal brownish black color to transleucent clearish?!?! a couple hours after that its fins had completly disintegrated and had died. has anybody ever heard of this insane sickness or know what it is. and possibly does anybody know what could have caused it. im completly baffled here so any help would be awsome. thanx much

nik

pleco is the sturdiest fish i've ever known. it can thrive anywhere.
i believe your water is in bad shape.... may be acidic or high in ammonia causing its fins to dis-integrate.

I had a similar thing happened to a red oscar I had about three years ago. It stopped eating and was breathing heavily. I came in the next morning and it looked like it had been dead for a week. I put it down to a severe bacterial infection. I think it would have to be some kind of infection to work that quickly. That's my guess anyway, I could be totally wrong

pleco's being sturdy fish is an understatement... my wife had a pleco in with a molly and a beta.. we ended up forced out of our house for a little over a week due to flooding... the pleco survived the water conditions as you can imagine were horrid since no electricity to run filters or air!

yeah, that is true. basically, that is what i mean when i said
sturdiest specie I've ever known. that was why i am wondering
what causes them to disintegrate so easily.

our pleco actually doubled in size with the horrid conditions it was like an all you can eat pleco buffet!!

BentBarrel wrote:


sorry, but.......