Sick Pleco

[ConanTheLibraia]

My pleco is hanging out at the bottom of the tank on the substrate. Hes really little, its hard to get a good look at him, but it looked like he had a little bit of fin rot. Earlier he was laying upside down, now hes right side up. He eats algae sometimes, other times just rests with only his fins touching the the bottom of the tank. My tank just broke out with green-brown hairy algae, still looking for a good way to clean up that. Could this algae be bad for him? I do not feed him algae wafers, he filter feeds and lives off algae.

 

[justDIY]

my pleco spends a lot of time resting on his pecs as well ... although I rarely get to see most of his fins, it usually keeps its dorsal and tail fins folded up unless he's fighting other fish for an algae wafer or trying to swim against the fspraybar

i've never noticed it laying upside down on the substrate, but sometimes feeding upside down on a sword leaf

 

[ConanTheLibraia]

Well he bit the dust the other day, no idea what happened but I don't find it strange one bit that my fish started acting funny and the smallest, the pleco died when this algae started breaking out. I removed as much by hand as i could, and pruned back some of the plants. There is still a lot though, is there somthing I could put in my filter that would help?

 

[i3k]

What kind of pleco was it? there is a "upside down" pleco's that swim upside down and will float upside down too. Most plecos do rest most of their time in one spot and they do rest on their fins as you described. During the day most plecos will hide in the darkest spot of the aquarium or behind plants. I have two snowball plecos and they are always hiding under my plastic caves and are active at nights when they start eating the algae off the glass. I would say your pleco died from poor water conditions. Have you done water tests? pH, ammonia, nitrite? keep an eye on the rest of your fish. If your other fish should start behaving weird, I would suggest a 25% water change immediately and do those water tests as well.