Please Read before Posting a health issue.

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Doodles

Retired Staff
Apr 8, 2009
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First off if you are reading this then chances are you have a sick fish or plec, hopefully if you can provide all the info I mention below, we can help.


1. A good general description of the symptoms.

Just saying help my fish has white spots can lead to many questions from members. A good description for example would be white spots, size of spots, raised or flat to the body, do they appear under the skin or on the skin? Also any other symptoms that are also present for example, how fast is the fish breathing or whether the fish is eating or not. The more info provided the quicker the fish can be diagnosed.


2. Size of tank and other tankmates.

This info helps to determine the possible stress levels of the fish, whilst this info may not directly cause diseases or ailments, they could certainly contribute towards how stressed the fish has become. The effects of stress lead to weakened, unhappy fish who are much more likely to become ill. Dealing only with the health problem you may have is just a short term fix, also sorting out the stressors will almost definitely prevent problems repeating.


3. Water parameters.

Very important to post the water parameters, more often than not, health problems are caused by poor water conditions.
The parameters to post are as follows
a. Ammonia
b. Nitrite
c. Nitrate
d Not quite as important as the above three but also the PH, KH and hardness.


4. Filtration and water change regime.

a.What filtration do you have running on your tank?
b. How often do you do water changes? how much do you change?
c. what do you use to remove chlorine/chloramines(if present) and heavy metals?


5. Diet.

The diet is a very important factor for a pleco, one of the most common pleco ailments is Bloat- This is often caused by a diet that isn't suited to your particular plec. example-if you own a panaque, you would not want to be feeding it meaty foods as this will eventually make the plec ill and possibly suffer from bloat. Unfortunately even if a bad diet doesn't directly
affect the plec, it will certainly be a big stressor.


6. Temperature of tank water

Can be important sometimes in health issues.


7. Treatments Used already


If you have already tried treating your plec, please post what you have used.


8. A Pic


This can really help with sorting out health issues and is highly recommended.
 
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