Clown Pleco Leading Pectoral rays red! help?

[acidise]

Fairly new P.Maccus was sick looking when I bought him. much better now, about two or three weeks later. All that seems to be wrong now is the leading ray of the pectoral fins is red, both sides and just the first fat ray in the fins. all other fins are fine, he doesn't seem to be fuzzy anymore. I never saw the fuzzy - i decided it was just the spines all over the body making him appear fuzzy. GF's Tank.
All parameters are in the ideal range, according to test strip bottle. 30 Gal Tank, no A or NO2, 10ish NO3, 100ish total hard, 120ish Alk, 7.4 PH
temp is 78. Last week or two had large temp. fluctuations, from above 80 to 65, heater was going wonky, and stressed the male and female platy out and they got patchy scales and the male got a fat lower lip so i QT'ed them with maracyn plus in a <2 gallon acrylic for about 9 days.
Brand new heater in the big tank now.
2 pieces of unknown driftwood in the tank, not very big, just for eating if he wants. hides in a plastic "wooden tunnel" decoration 3 - 4" white pea gravel with some red fluorite underneath. few softball sized rocks here and there. 2 fake tall skinny plants. 1 fluval 403 with floss, charcoal, porous bacteria fluval cylinder things. 1 biowheel hang on back with cartridge filter. old cartridge was in there for about 2 or 3 months. just changed it 2 weeks ago. Calgary Alberta Canada tap water for WC's warmed to approx. the same temp as tank out of the tap. 10 Gal. water changes every 3 or 4 weeks.
just in the last 5 days, water has gone cloudy, not green but just pale, i guess white. the biowheel filter impeller had stopped for a day or so, got it going again. this is also before the new heater was put in. and b4 the sick fish were put back in.
Doing a 50% change with gravel vac today, changed 10 gal 3 days ago without gravel vac. (miscommunication of how to vacuum tank over the phone) i live 1.5 hrs north of the tank, gf had never vacuumed it before.
Old HOB filter cartridge didnt get clogged up, just figured that after 2 or 3 months, the tiny amount of charcoal they contained was dead.
Do i worry about the red on the Clowns' pec. Fins or give it another week or so to clear up? would making him a cave of bigger proportions be better or can they realize that something is too small to fit into before hurting themselves, the entrances seem plenty big enough in the tunnel thing he likes. Had red on his fins since day one, bout 2 or 3 weeks ago.
Thanks for your time everybody.

[MatsP]

A photo would be great. I don't see any reason from what you describe that should be wrong (large temp change isn't that fantastic, but I don't think there should be a big problem longer term).

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Mats

[acidise]

thankyou mats, got some decent pics on my n95 phone but its a horrible phone and needs its own software and usb cable to download and im on the gf's computer. will get pics up in my aquaria soon i hope. thankyou.
also, where do i look for sexing the clown? any threads that are decent come to mind?

[MatsP]

Don't slag it too much - I work for Nokia and the part that makes software for those phones (Yes, that's really what I do for a living!!) I'm pretty sure there is an option to send data over blue-tooth if you have BT on the computer (most laptops do). And as long as you have the cable, it should work as a external drive on your computer.

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Mats

[acidise]

hey there, update about the pleco. its been another week or two, got all the temperature problems fixed, found some hair on the impeller of the penguin filter which was causing that to go wacky sometimes. and cleaned the tubes out on the fluval, its a fluval 204 by the way, not a 403.
the pleco has great coloring now, went super pale during a water change but was fine an hour later.
still has red on the outer 3/4 of his pectoral first ray. not against his body, but 1.4 of the way out from his body until the end. is he just gettin rammy with stuff? thankyou

[acidise]

The clown pleco has been getting worse slowly. he comes out during the day time quite a bit and forages around. every leading ray on all his fins except the anal fin and the tail fin is red, or getting red. nitrates at about 5 ish, 0 for others. 7.4 ish ph, 120 hardness, 120 alk, on a strip kit.
temps around 24 degrees.
30 gallon tank, maybe 2 tbsp aquarium salt in there from 4 weeks ago. water change done every week or two of 30 percent. filters cleaned once a month or so. rotating each one.
has 1 "wood" plastic bridge to hide in with a hollow pillar at each end and the sides of the bridge are "busted" holes in the "wood", theres a angled slate cave type thing, more of a lean-to. 2 different pieces of wood to chew on.
1 algae wafer a day, the tiny ones, maybe two sometimes. flakes for the ghost cats and platies. and the cory delphax also eats the wafer.
could the red fins be from malnutrition or underfeeding. the 2 platies like the wafers, the cory likes the wafer, the clown likes the wafer.
his belly doesn't look sunken or anything. just red leading rays on his fins.
basically hes got the boiled lobster look on those rays. everything else seems fine, eyes, webbing, colors, color change ability.
tried a baby carrot and a radish a week or so ago. noone touched those. trying watermelon right now.
any other ideas would be greatly appreciated. thankyou.
how do i know if i need more water conditioner in the tank?

[MatsP]

A photo would still be beneficial.

Do you have any (real!) wood in the tank?

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Mats

[Carp37]

I've only got two of these- about 2.5" SL, in a 3'X1'X15" tank, with 6 corys and 6 neons, but despite doing 50% water changes every 4-5 days (including gravel vac of all "open" areas of gravel), I've had to vastly reduce the amount of gravel in there (from about 1" thick down to just a couple of grains thick), AND have to remove all the decor every two weeks to do an exhaustive gravel vacuum), due to the sheer quantities of wood dust they create, making the gravel toxic. This hasn't shown up in nitrate/nitrite/ammonia spikes so presumably is a toxin produced by anaerobic bacteria (methane/hydrogen sulphide or similar?), but did result in similar (ultimately fatal) problems for two Corydoras in the tank before I realised what was happening and changed the setup. For such small fish, the amount of waste they produce is incredible.

So counting Mats' suggestion, there are two wood-related possibilities:-
no real wood (suggested by Mats) in its diet to aid digestion
real wood is present and being eaten, but the byproducts of that (semi-digested wood waste) could be poisoning your substrate.