Dead Bristlenose Catfish.....Help!

[jhd]

It is quite a desister with your tank.
Apart from high tem to treat ich (ick),
from your picture it looks like you have large gravel.
Just to make sure, I need to ask you if you vacuum IN the gravel.
With large gravel, uneaten food can not be recover by fish and keeps rotting. Bottom dwellers are affected first, stressed out and they are prone to ick, which first affect stressed fish (especially scaleless).
Make sure that you vacuum in the gravel, 25% of water weekly.
To check your kit, take sample of water from your tank and give it to be checked in your store you got the fish from. Results should agree. Good luck.

 

[drbrad25]

Tell me about it, i'm starting to feel like a mass murderer! In total, i've lost 18 fish (all the neons are gone now and it's just the lone platy left).

Interesting point about the gravel (it's a mix of small and large gravel but mainly large). I do my best to clean it when i do water changes (removing the rocks, etc.) but i've got quite a few plants so i'm worried about damaging their root systems. Any ideas about this?

Also, do you think there is too much gravel in my tank? I could probably get away with removing some and that might help with cleaning.

Everyone says it's bad when overfeeding fish because it pollutes your tank but how exactly does it pollute the tank? What sort of chemicals does it create that are bad?

I'll get the fish store to check my water tomorrow when i go. I've decided to get a hospital tank which i'll put my last Platy in for a while i get things sorted in the other tank (might have to remove some plants to make it easier to clean). Also, in case it's a cycling problem, i'll try adding some ammonia and see if it spikes.

 

[jhd]

I do not know exactly what chemicals is produced when organic matter is rotting between the gravel. I use to have big gravel, 5-6 mm in size, about 1/4 inch. A lot of food would get there and fish was unable to get to it. I changed that to 1 to 3 mm gravel and my problem is over. I have cory catfish that does amazing cleaning job, but now they can get to the food on the bottom, grains are too small for the food to get down between them.
Just sink your siphon between the gravel and see if the cloud of uneaten food will show up in the tube.
Go easy near the plants, but sink the siphon anyway.
If you start removing plants, you will distribute all that high nitrite/nitrate that is (or might be) in the gravel all over the tank, that will make it worse.
The idea is to have small gravel, it is the easy way to maintain clean water.