This might be a silly question, but my pleco is pooping out this white stringy substance.... never seen him poop before, but is this normal? it doesnt look like the rest of my fish poop. I wouldn't care so much but its been getting stuck all over my angelfish like cobweb... and yes, i havent done a water change in a while since ive been cycling.
haha... i guess it's fine... i've seen my pleco's poop all kinds of colors... red, blue, green, and white too... they've never gotten sick or died after a wierd color of poop...
so i was doing some research online about the white poop, and in pleco's a lot of people have been saying its an internal parasite.... and to use tank buddies parasite cleaner. I hate using chemicals, and from what i understand i dont have to remove any carbon for this tablet that fizzes. I will wait it out... my pleco hasnt been touching the algae wafers i leave him, and the other night he was on top of my powerhead (as usual)... and he looked lifeless, so i went in to touch him knowing he would dart away as he usually does, but instead he LET me pet him, very very strange. I think it might be a parasite, I don't have any clue as to how this could have entered my tank, so im gonna give it some time to see if it truly is one. It would make sense as there is toooons of white stringy poop and around the water column and filmy stuff on the surface when i did a small water change today.
Are you sure you don't feed too much? I am using my gar's feeder fish tank for 100's of baby mosquito fish and can't store the feeder fish, so I buy about 30 small goldfish at a time and only feed the gars once every 3-4 days. My pleco probably gets most of it's food from eating algae, as I hardly put any food like flakes into the tank that gets to the bottom. Same for the dojos.
well i definitely dont feed the pleco too much, cuz since i first posted on this forum i haven't had algae since... especially not since my tank recycled... and i never fed him back then since he would scrounge for any algae on the glass. The tablets i recently added cuz i assumed he was dying of hunger, and he ate one since i bought them, and his second this morning. I also dont put the whole tablet in, maybe 1/2 tab.
I just thought of something. I could be wrong, but it sounds like sperm! If this is a male pleco he might just be jerkin off! Males of many most or all egg laying fish will dump sperm into the water onto newly laid eggs, and maybe he had a wet dream or something? This is just a guess. Maybe he was having a Bikini Bottom dream! Get it?
You know how guys get when they haven't had a woman in a long time, or I guess to be politically correct, the object of their passion. Who knows? I don't even know if a male fish can or will for some reason release sperm without eggs with which to fertilise. Coral, which is a whole bunch of critters I guess, will all dump sperm together at some environmental cue, and it makes the water milky. I wouldn't want to compare coral, fish, and people and pretend to know what I'm talking about. It's just that white, thready, milky? Hey! My tilapia and arowana either shits out or throws up something that sounds like what you are describing once in a while. It looks like tissue from the stomach or something. Maybe my pleco does this and my other fish are playing with it? I'll stop.
almost every search i do says it is either inadequate diet, or internal parasite. But seeing as how the poope and his activity is back to normal, i'm siding with inadequate diet for now. If the situation changes ill let u know. thanks
OK. You guys are both right as far as I can tell. I went on another forum and it's not sperm. It's like you said SB, it's either something in their diet or parasites. She said lots of things can come out of the vents of fishes. If the fish is not remaining sick there's no reason to add anti parasite medication.
