my plec keep dying

Question
ive just started having tropical fish and they are doing good from what i can see but i bought a plec ( albino) it died after one day / night then i bought a different breed of plec and i just found it dead not floating but on the bottom of the tank and when i took it out it smelled bad please can you advise me of whats happening ?

Answer
Hi Ciaran,
I cannot be for sure what might have happened but I have a few educated guesses. The first is your water quality may be bad and the plecos could be dying from ammonia or nitrite poisoning. This would be a very great possibility if this tank has been setup recently and is under 6 weeks old. The best thing you could do is to test your water to see the reading of your ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates. These levels should be= Ammonia-0 Nitrite-0 Nitrate-20 or less.
If you have any trace of ammonia or nitrite then it can have very bad effects on plecos.

If you've ruled out water quality being a factor and the tests come out as they should. Then I would make sure and check several things- did you make sure to=
*Dechlorinate the water with a quality water conditioner that neutralizes chlorine, chloramine, and heavy metals?

*Carefully Acclimate the plecos first by floating them and then later adding a little bit of tank water into the bag every 5-10 minutes until you have doubled the volume of water in the bag? (The water conditions from the petstore may be vastly different from your tank)

*Made sure you got healthy plecos? In otherwords those that are not too skinny (emaciated) seem pretty healthy and full with good color and are very responsive when disturbed?

*Do you know what species of plecs these are? Some species are really difficult...

These are all very important things to check when you are losing fish mysteriously. You usually have to do some investigating to find the cause or the problem.

I really hope this helps. Best wishes!
Karen~