Second Plecostumus (sp?) just died?

[King$nake]

Well, I have a 20g freshwater tank. It started off with 3 wag platies, they had babies now there must be over 30 or so little platies rollin around in there. They all seem to be happy.

Anyways, I had a algae eater in there since the beginning of the fish tank. A couple months ago, the skin on his back started to turn white and he started acting very sick. The 'white' on his back started to grow (it looked like dead flesh) and within 2 days he was belly up and dead. It was wierd because the 2 catfish I had in there both died around the same time. Anyways I have all these platies in there and (gold and black) and they all seem to be happy. Well the other day I decided to get them another plecstumus to help with the algae. I just got him on Friday, and today I went to feed the fish and he was dead! What was disguisting was his whole stomach was hollowed out and his organs/fish crap was hanging out of his hollowed out corpse. I couldnt believe it! Were the platies eating his flesh or something?

Anyways, the platies are getting really fat, I feed them 1-2x a day. Is this a good feeding schedule?

thanks
j

 

[mtbridin]

sorry to hear about you lose mate. what type of pleco was it??
once the pleco was dead the platties probaly would of been picking at it and eating depends how hungry they are and how long he was dead for..
how long was the white patches on his back for before he died???

platties are a much more hardyer fish then plecos so that may be the reason why they still look fine
sorry i cant be much more help to you mate..
im no expert

 

[Mercury]

I think you should deep-clean your tank (that means gravel too. Take it out and clean it). Even if you don't know what it is, its good to remove whatever is killing your fish. Maybe your 30 platies are creating too much waste for you other fish.