dead clown pleco

Question
Hi my clown fish died today and while I took him out of my 5 gallon hexigon tank and I noticed that my pleco had a blue belly and two bloody dots on each side of his tail. Now my freind thinks that when I put a cucumber in the tank on a stand, it went bad and he ate it and got poisioned. Is he right?

Answer
Hi Notelling,
  I really, really, really doubt that eating a bad cucumber was the problem. In fact, I would be amazed if that was the problem.  

  It is possible that if the cucumber rotted in the tank the water became foul and that could kill the fish.  But, a fish is very unlikely to eat something that has gone rancid.  

-- Ron
  rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com
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