This guy was in the crashed tank that claimed the lives of most of my fish. He's now convalescing in a smaller tank with my two remaining goldfish. Tank is 6 gals, ammonia around 2ppm at max, water changes twice a day as it's cycling, no traces of nitrIte or nitrAte. Two filters running, one air powered, plus an airstone and a long air bar on max. 3tbsp per 5gal of salt. A few sticks of gf food 1nce a day atm as they all have little appetite, and the bristlenose is ignoring his algal wafers. tank is also being dosed with sterazin

The bristlenose is exhibiting similar signs to the clown pleco when he died (yesterday) very swollen, a greyish belly, bright red under the skin in places, and keeps going to the top for air, even though the tank is really well aerated. His paired fins all have ragged holes in them.

I'm guessing it's an overhang from whatever caused the rest of them to die- I'm still not sure what made the tank crash so disastrously. The 2 gf are recovering nicely, even their fins are healing.

Is there anything I can do for the pleco? It's a week before he can go back into his 30 gal, and i've now run out of quarantine tanks!

im pretty sure plecs dont tolerate salt. the amount youve put in may be too much for him. i would do lots of water changes to bring the salt down to 0. try to keep the ammonia below 1 as well.

i know my pleco couldnt go with salt..but im not sure if that applys to all.........
Sandy's right, u shud bring it down just in case...

Okay, I'll see whether that helps. Trouble is that they all seem to have respiration difficulties and I don't want to make it any more difficult for the goldfish

He has been in a tank salted to that level for months and seemed fine, until last friday when I put in fungus and finrot stuff, and immediately he and the other plec appeared paralysed- though they were ok when I got them out early monday morning, the other one died shortly afterwards

I guess the high ammonia is definitely not helping- I've just done a 50% water change and it's 2ppm- gods only know what it must have been since I last tested at lunchtime

Ho hum, off to buy ammolock in the morning.