sick pleco? mabey?

[liquidelusion]

i recently got two "common" plecos fromt the lfs around my way. about two days ago i noticed one of them is missing apart of his right fin and had a long clear/white strand coming out of him. what could this strand be? a parasite? the other fish i have in the tank are rasporas and danios, along with two golden mystery snails, so i dont think the pleco was attacked or anything. i am concerened because i did not notice the missing fin last week when i aquired the fish and i have also never seen these strands coming from the fish. also the strands do not seem to come off very easy at all.

tia

 

[Menagerie]

long clear/white strand coming out of him

From what part of him?

 

[liquidelusion]

ahh well its coming from, i am not sure of the fishy term, but its coming from his butt. it doesnt seem like the poop any of my other fish expel, but i have never had a pleco before. it also seemed to be as long as his body, mabey longer.

 

[krap101]

hmm its white. is the poop stringy?

err is it coming from the umm hole or is it lik the cheek. lol all i can say now. hard using not every day terms lol

 

[ferret]

I wouldn't worry about the poop too much.. You have a bigger problem right now.. Unless this is a very large tank, you need to get rid of the second injured pleco, and the better the sooner. Common plecos are not particularily kind to their own and should be kept solo except in extremely large tanks (150+).. They reach 14 inches in length easily and will fight each other from everything I've read and researched.

The poop is probably due to stress and/or change in diet. The fin damage I would almost 100% gaurentee was done by the other pleco.

 

[liquidelusion]

i think it was coming from the hole but im honeslty not sure. all i know is that it was definatly stuck there, and the fish could not get it off for a while. he got is off by swimming over the gravel and sword plants repeatedly

 

[liquidelusion]

I wouldn't worry about the poop too much.. You have a bigger problem right now.. Unless this is a very large tank, you need to get rid of the second injured pleco, and the better the sooner. Common plecos are not particularily kind to their own and should be kept solo except in extremely large tanks (150+).. They reach 14 inches in length easily and will fight each other from everything I've read and researched.

The poop is probably due to stress and/or change in diet. The fin damage I would almost 100% gaurentee was done by the other pleco.

oh no really! i got these fish because i was told they would be very passive, and since the store had like 12 of them in a tank together i thought it would be ok....i knew i shouldnt have trusted petsmart

 

[ferret]

Petsmart sells a lot of fish to unsuspecting people without really telling you anything. These fish are passive... to other fish. They only fight with each other when they don't have enough territory. They will also grow to a foot in length in little more than a year, requiring a good size tank for them to live in (55 gallon would be absolute minimum and still not really enough)

They sell 3 inches common plecos as "medium sized" at Petsmart. A medium sized pleco is about 3 times as large as those you saw in the store. A fully grow one is probably about the size of your forearm, wrist, and hand.

 

[liquidelusion]

ack! thats really big! i knew they would get big, but i didnt think that large or that fast! well i guess i will need to move forward with my plans to get a bigger tank pretty soon huh? right now i just have a 29 gallon

 

[ferret]

Yeah, you'll definately need a bigger tank if you want to keep him. I have one right now in a 90 gallon. I used to have two, but I gave one to my mother-in-law because his tank mates were beating him up. Both are about a year old and a foot long.

There are other, smaller plecos you can get if its not to late to take these two back to Petsmart, but you'd have to be willing to go to a different store (Not a bad idea, some petsmarts are horrible for fish, though some are good) or order onlnie.

 

[liquidelusion]

hmm thanks alot for the info! i will definatly have to consider this situation and figure out what to do