HELP!!!!! Dead BN!!!!!

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EXM

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Oct 11, 2006
Messages
65
My BN plecos just died all of a sudden. I have been checking the water quality, temperature and every thing seemed fine until four just croaked! Any guesses why?
 
i had a pleco up and die on me a month or so ago. in retrospect, i guess he was more docile than usual, but when i took him out i noticed that he had this white slime residue on his underside. a disease i did not catch. my parameters were fine too.

anything like that?
 
Moved to Unhealthy fish Forum.

Any number of issues could be the culprit. You didn't mention his age (definitely a possibility with BN's) or his size (some BN are actually runts and have a difficult time although they seem healthy). I guess this was a regular Brown BN and not an Albino?
 
I find it hard to believe that age would cause 4 of them to die in the same night.
 
Yes, it was 4 that died and they weren't even over 30mm as were the other twelve. I had four per tank, with two 10gals and two 5gals. I fed them bi-daily of spurilina tablets and tri-daily with shrimp pellets. The hole tank looked perfectly fine, and there was little algae hence the tablets. They had been in there for about 2 weeks, with a air stone and a whisper filter.
 
bi-daily? i'd say they were malnurished

you really should feed your fish 1+ times daily, and i really encourage multiple feedings daily
 
Did they have any physical signs of any type of illness. Skinny or bloated? White cottony patches or white spots? There are a number of reasons for fish deaths. What size tank and what other inhabitants?
 
Take a look into the spurilina tablets. They are the same size as the fish. That is why I fed them bi-daily. And none of the other fish are having any problems with it. :?

Edit:
Oh, and no sign of being skinny or bloated. I checked in on them three times per day. And no discoloration at all. The tank next to them did have some pH problems (the pH dropped from a little lower than 8.2 to lower than 4.0) but someone had added some sort of acid into that tank. This one had normal pH, normal ammonia, normal nitrite, normal disolved oxygen, normal carbon dioxide levels, everything seemed fine until the next morning everything was dead in that tank (only the four plecos).
 
If they were in the same tank there is the possibility that they killed each other. I know it sounds odd, but if they were young and then became mature or wanted to breed then they could have battered each other to death. I put a second female in with my main pair hoping it would encourage breeding and the females went to battle almost instantly. A couple of scrapes later I got them apart and they have survived fine.

You say you have them in 10 and 5 gallon tanks, 4 in each? Did you cycle the tanks? Did they have caves to hide in? It also seems like alot of bioload for a 5 gallon, if that is the one that failed. Anything could have spiked and caused it to happen to all the members of one tank, especially if the tanks aren't cycled. What about the filtration for each tank?

Sorry to ask so many questions but if it happenned to one tank it could repeat itself in the others and none of us want that, especially you.
 
(the pH dropped from a little lower than 8.2 to lower than 4.0) but someone had added some sort of acid into that tank.

This is a bit troubling but may shed some light on the event. That is a drastic drop and should have been fatal to the other tank. Is it possible that the same thing happened to the tank in question and went unnoticed? It is a stretch but this is the only clue so far.
 
No, I am afraid they weren't old enough to be mature let alone the size. And the same thing didn't happen again. The fish in the first case had had the slime coat pealing off the skin while the second case did not. And now the
 
What was the pH on the tank where they died for the last couple days? Actually, what is the KH of both tank, the one where they died and the one where the pH went nuts but they didn't die?
 
Well, first the pH on the one that went pH crazy did have the fish die, in a matter of hours. Second, I checked the pH on the other tank and it was at 7.2 just like the other two. And quite recently, I discovered that the 2 others were overfed by someone and now they are dead. So, I gave the teacher a letter to think about at the end of the day and it said that I was very upset with the fact that she could not maintain her students within certain boundaries and that I will be dropping this as well as any other classes I had with her. It also said that I would be notifying her employer my opinion over this unfortunate situation.
 
I wish you had mentioned that the tanks were not under your care from the beginning. Considering what you posted above, just about anything could have occurred.
 
Didn't you read that these were at school. They were always under my contemperary supervision while they were set up. I would check these daily. Besides, I dropped the class. The teacher could not manage to contain her class within certain bounderies and I notified the principle of this and then dropped it at mid-term. Now I am keeping them in my tanks at home; 1 in each 10gal, 1 in my 2.5gal and 4 in my 30gal. I don't expect it to be a problem anymore.
 
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