a changing colour disease?!

[whatsmango]

a mate of mine has recently lost a swordtail. before its sad departure to fishy heaven, he noticed that on its back it had developed a wierd pigment colour of orange (it was originally white with an orange stipe from head to tail). another one also has this now too. we first put it down simply to the fish wanting to breed, but obviously when it died it puzzled us. hope you guys can help in any way!

 

[whatsmango]

k he went to a fish shop and asked the owner what could be wrong with it, and she said it was the plecs doing it. apparantly, at night when the plecs are active and the swordtails are asleep on the bottom, the plecs are hungry and due to no algae for them to eat, they are sucking on the swordtails to eat the algae on them.

has anyone else ever heard of this? the woman is a good source so we trust her word on it. and again, if anyone else has a possible suggestion it is appreciated. cheers dudes!

 

[shark16]

Algae doesn't grow on fish. Sometimes plecos suck on flat bodied fish to feed on their slimecoat. The plecos are obviously not getting enough food at the fish store and if this happens the fish should be moved away from the pleco immediately. I don't think the pleco sucking on the swordtail would change it's color either. Maybe the fish had a parasite such as Velvet which appears as gold dust on the fish. HTH.