Hello, I am new to these forums. I have a sick plecostamus (sp?). He was a very dark color up until last week, with leopard-ish pattern on him like most pleco do. He's about 3 or 4 inches long I think.
Last week, I noticed he wasn't eating much, and his color started to lighten as if he was "going gray" and possibly getting old. He hasn't been moving much this past day or two. Last night, I saw that he was belly-up at the bottom of the tank, struggling for air. His scales have become so light, he has almost the reverse pattern he had before - light splotches, with darker coloring on the borders of his splotches.
I don't know much about testing water for nitrates, etc, and have never done this in the past. I had a fish with dropsy about a year ago, which I treated and he survived a good 3 months afterwards. This doesn't look like dropsy to me, as he doesn't appear to have the pine cone effect going on. He doesn't have anything resembling Ich, external parasites, or body fungus. There are no signs of pop-eye, fin or tail rot, or and red streaking on the body at all.
His lower "lip" does seem a tad orangish or reddish. About 2 months ago, he had a rather large blister type thing under his mouth, it swelled up quite large for a while, and didn't seem to get any better on it's own. I think he may have burned himself on the heater, because that was his favorite spot until he got the blister and hasn't been there since. While he had the blister, I treated him with Maracyn. His blister went away after treatment and all was well until now.
I have recently added 2 gourami (pearl I think) and about 8 feeder fish. One feeder fish died, another did the live birth thing. None of the feeders have been eaten, so I let them live on until someone decides it's lunch time. They were in there for the 2 original fish I had, kissing gourami. I also have a spunky leopard danio in there. I know I need to move the kissing gourami out, since they are getting a little big.
I can't seem to figure out what could be causing his poor health, and I really like the guy. Can someone please help?
