BN Pleco With Swollen Face?

[Vircomore]

Hey all,

So, in my 26 gal bow front, I have a "school" (15-16) of juvenile black mollies, and a single young albino BN pleco.

The pleco has been doing well for about 3-4 weeks, but just yesterday I found that the area between his bristles and his eyes is swollen, and his eyes are protruding a bit more than usual.

I had let him go after a piece of zucchini a little longer than usual yesterday, so Im not sure if he injured himself, or if he's just sore from a "long lunch".

 

[neilanh]

Can you get a pic?

Give it a day or two, see if anything changes.

 

[Vircomore]

Looks like I just discovered the culprit, and it's a result of my own "slacking off".

To give you some backstory, I've been having trouble getting my tank to cycle for the past 2 months, and my test results were getting monotonous - "all ammonia, zero nitrites, zero nitrates".

Here's where I failed. I figured that - since I'm doing water changes every 2-3 days to keep the ammonia down - that I'd only have to test once every 2-3 days.


...turns out - in the past 24-48 hours, my tank has swung completely from the ammonia stage to the nitrite stage. I just did I test and there was a little bit of ammonia --- but the nitrite test was as purple as it can go.

So if deduced that the pleco is suffering severe Nitrite Poisoning, and I'm starting an emergency series of water changes as well as a 5x dose of Prime to the tank.

I just hope I can save him.

(The Mollies aren't showing any sign of distress at all.)