Pleco Died, Worried About Tankmates

[rami]

First off, sorry for the lack of editing and the langth of this post, today has just sucked all around.

So I just got home and went to look at my tank, and I saw my common pleco, about 2-3 inches long, lieing on his back, dead.. All the other fish seem healthy but I'm worried that something could be wrong with the tank.
I've been feeding him the occasional organic zucchini so I doubt he starved to death.
Unfortunately, I don't own a full test kit (just ph), but I will go get the water tested in the morning.I'm relatively knew to fish keeping, this is the first one to die on me ( well, besides the cycling, the people at the LFS told me to do a fish-n cycle, with no water changes ever) I've had him about 2 months, (yes, the tank was fully cycled before I got him)


He has been seeming a bit sluggish for a day or two...and I just did a 40% water change this morning
Request Help

Tank size: 20 gallon
pH: 7.8 I know this is high, but it is high enough to kill a fish?
ammonia: unknown
nitrite: unknown
nitrate: unknown
kH:unknown
gH: unknown
tank temp: normally about 75 F

Fish Symptoms (include full description including lesion, color, location, fish behavior): Dead.

Volume and Frequency of water changes: once every two weeks, 40% gravel vack

Chemical Additives or Media in your tank: Aquaclear or something like that. Also, I have no carbon filtration, the LFS said that just an under gravel was enough

Tank inhabitants: 2 blue gouramis 1 gold gourami and 3 paradise fish, and 1 ex-pleco

Recent additions to your tank (living or decoration): none, everyone has been happy for the last 2+ months

Exposure to chemicals: none that I can think of

Digital photo (include if possible):

 

[Tolak]

What have you been feeding the rest of the fish? Your pH isn't an issue, I keep plecs in 7.6-7.8.

 

[rami]

What have you been feeding the rest of the fish? Your pH isn't an issue, I keep plecs in 7.6-7.8.

Regular flakes, and occaisonally frozen blood worms as a treat.

 

[Tolak]

May have been the bloodworms more than anything. I made the mistake of keeping a common plec in with some angels I was bulking up as breeders some time ago. The high protein diet fed to the angels ended up on the bottom, even though I was feeding plenty of zucchini to the plec. High protein diets & plecs don't mix, they have a long digestive tract. End result was bloat with an infection, poor fish didn't make it.

Feed the flake & bloodworms just a little at a time, to make sure the appropriate fish get it first. I didn't, & didn't even think about it until afterwards.

Bristlenose plecs seem to be able to handle a higher protein diet better than commons. Never had that problem with bristlenose.

 

[rami]

Alright, so next plec I get I will make sure to feed the flakes slowly so none of them land on the bottom. I don't see any bloating, however he is still barely alive so I haven't taken him out to examin him. I'm thinking maybe a catfish or some other sort of bottom feeder might be better, because I'd hate to kill another pleco via overfeeding

Ahh, so much to learn about fishkeeping! AS soon as I think I got it down, something else comes up :0