Pleco disaster

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Irishlad123

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Hi everyone i woke up to find 12 of my pleco juviniles floating. I had put in esha 200 last night could this have depleted the oxygen because alll my fish look terrible except my betta which has a labryth organ. Nitrite and nitrate are in safe levels ammonia is now high from the die off. I did change their food and i did a water change last week.
 
Hi everyone i woke up to find 12 of my pleco juviniles floating. I had put in esha 200 last night could this have depleted the oxygen because alll my fish look terrible except my betta which has a labryth organ. Nitrite and nitrate are in safe levels ammonia is now high from the die off. I did change their food and i did a water change last week.
Could be an oxygen issue beens the beta is still alive but I know most pleco are also air breathers and can live out of water for up to 24 hours , if it was oxygen I’d of expected more 12 gasping pleco at the water surface but I don’t know
 
Is there any aeration/ surface turbulence in the tank?

You either overdosed them or they are suffocating. Most fish medications reduce the oxygen level in the water and this is why you need to increase aeration when using chemicals.

You also need to find out the exact amount of water in the tank because medications are borderline on poisoning the fish vs killing the disease without killing the fish. If you treat the tank for 100 litres and there's only 80 litres of water, you can wipe out the tank.

Your best bet is to increase aeration/ surface turbulence and do a partial water change.

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Before you treat the tank, do the following things.
Work out the volume of water in the tank:
measure length x width x height in cm.
divide by 1000.
= volume in litres.

If you have big rocks or driftwood in the tank, remove these so you get a more accurate water volume.

When you measure the height, measure from the top of the substrate to the top of the water level.
You can use a permanent marker to draw a line on the tank at the water level and put down how many litres are in the tank at that level.

There is a calculator/ converter in the "FishForum.net Calculator" under "Useful Links" at the bottom of this page that will let you convert litres to gallons if you need it.

Remove carbon from the filter before treating or it will adsorb the medication and stop it working.

Wipe the inside of the glass down with a clean fish sponge.

Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate. The water change and gravel cleaning will reduce the number of disease organisms in the water and provide a cleaner environment for the fish to recover in. It also removes a lot of the gunk and this means any medication can work on treating the fish instead of being wasted killing the pathogens in the gunk.
Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank.

Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. However, if the filter is less than 6 weeks old, do not clean it. Wash the filter materials/ media in a bucket of tank water and re-use them. Tip the bucket of dirty water on the garden/ lawn. Cleaning the filter means less gunk and cleaner water with fewer pathogens.

Increase surface turbulence/ aeration when using salt or medications because they reduce the dissolved oxygen in the water.
 

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