PlanetCatfish.com

Hi there all! How's it going?
Now I'm new to this so please be nice.
I was wondering if someone might be able to offer me some advice. I have; in the past month, brought two catfish. Firstly I purchased a Pleco only for it to die a day and a half later and just this weekend I brought a Pictus only for it to be bottoms up the next morning; very sad. Could anyone offer me suggestions on why this might be happening? At the same time other fish of similar sizes where brought & they were fine. Are they somewhat fragile fish?

Cheers

First, let me say Welcome to Planet Catfish.

Fragility in fish is a relative term...

isn't particularly known as a fragile fish.

Pleco means any fish out of a few hundred (if not a thousand) species of Loricariidae - most of which I'd call hardy, but there are exceptions.

However, there are things that most fish "don't like": Rapid changes in water parameters, temperature, pH, hardness, nitrate, ammonia and nitrite levels. If you haven't got a water test-kit, you should invest in one before you buy more fish.

Check the pH of the water in your tank, then ask the shop what pH they have [unfortunately,many shops are unlikely to know, but maybe they'll allow you to test it If your shop does know, then that's GREAT...]. If there's a big difference, make sure you get quite a bit of water from the shop, and keep the fish in the bag, floating on top of the tank, and very slowly add water from your tank into the bag. If you have a big difference (more than 2 pH units), you should get half a bucket of shop-water and keep the fish in the bucket with an air-stone, slowly drip (using an airline wiht a small restriction to transfer a drop at a time) water from your tank to the bucket.

Nitrate levels is a different possibility - check, and if it's high (more than 50 ppm), you should do more water changes to keep the level down (and check the incoming water, as that's possibly a source of nitrate).

Ammonia and nitrite are caused by the fish-waste. If your tank is mature, none of these should have any indication. Google for "cycling the tank" to see how to fix this, if you have any measure of either of these compounds.

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Mats