Help. Need Advice For Extremely Ill Pleco..

[Jackiee]

Ammonia that high for that long in this state id be surprised if he lasts, plec's are hardy but not that hardy. It seems whatever you are doing to your tanks is causing these spikes, have you tested the water your adding for ammonia and nitrate? 
 
Do you siphon the gravel etc on water changes?

He is still alive as of right now.. I put zucchini and cucumber slices in there last night.. He's been laying right on top of them but I can't tell if they've been chewed or sucked on really. His tank is being dosed with prime constantly as of now to detoxify.. The water that I did his water change with was gallon jugs of purified water they don't contain ammonia.

His water is still 82 degrees and I've continued blacking out his tank. Its still dosed with metronidazole. I soaked his slices of cucumber and zucchini in the medicine too. As well as garlic.

 

[looking-glass]

at least hes still alive, was the filter brand new in the quarantine tank? maybe this could have caused the ammonia spike? not much more you can do than you have been doing hopefully he might start eating.

 

[Jackiee]

at least hes still alive, was the filter brand new in the quarantine tank? maybe this could have caused the ammonia spike? not much more you can do than you have been doing hopefully he might start eating.

He had an old filter cartridge in there, I rinsed it off to clean some gunk off of it, used treated water, put it back in the filter and added a new filter cartridge right behind it with fresh carbon but when I started dosing his tank with the medication, I took the new filter out because it had activated carbon and I just left the old one. Idk what's going on. Yeah.. I hope he pulls through but idk. He's still hanging in there, idk how!

 

[AshleyNZ]

Rinsed it with tap water? Carbon wouldnt be very helpful, it's mainly just for making the water clearer. (Correct me if im wrong )

 

[Fluval-1200]

You can overdose prime.....

 

[Jackiee]

You can overdose prime.....

  

at least hes still alive, was the filter brand new in the quarantine tank? maybe this could have caused the ammonia spike? not much more you can do than you have been doing hopefully he might start eating.

  

Rinsed it with tap water? Carbon wouldnt be very helpful, it's mainly just for making the water clearer. (Correct me if im wrong )

I just removed the carbon because his antibiotic instructions said to do so. The guy is still alive.. I'm amazed. His water has slowly gone from 82 to 86 over the past few days. I have been overdosing with prime to keep everything detoxified. His eyes have began to fill in again, strange.. I take that as a good sign. But his stomach looks GOD AWFUL. His entire stomach area where his wound was is pink and he has very very light fluffy looking cotton around the edges of his stomach. It doesn't look like fungus. I don't know if this is his skin healing or rotting?.. His stomach is almost nonexistent though in terms of fatness, he looks starved. I have been continually putting in a slice of zucchini, cucumber in his tank. Can't really tell if he's eating it, if he is, it's a small amount.

I dosed the tank with pimafix to protect his wound.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Prime causes false ammonia reading because it neutralizes ammonia making it non-toxic. You need to test very soon after dosing the Prime into a tank to get a decent reading. The way prime works and the way the test kits work cause the false reading.
 
As far as I can tell the only chance you really had was to try the meds I suggested. Those would work in the water and do not need to be fed.
 
Have a read here which is the site I linked you to above. there are two articles there relevant to the meds and your prblem.Here is a quick quote from one:

The hydra-killing Flubendazole that I used in my office aquarium to eradicate hydra led me to a larger realization. The “wasting” fish in that tank seemed to become cured when I added Flubendazole to the water. Whoa! This was quite a remarkable revelation. My intent was to remove the hydra and any possible nematodes and, to my surprise, the disease I have found to be associated with a particular protozoan species was cured.

from http/www.inkmkr.com/Fish/FlubendazoleArticle.pdf
 
Read this one as well http/www.inkmkr.com/Fish/FlubendazoleTreatment.pdf

 

[Jackiee]

Prime causes false ammonia reading because it neutralizes ammonia making it non-toxic. You need to test very soon after dosing the Prime into a tank to get a decent reading. The way prime works and the way the test kits work cause the false reading.
 
As far as I can tell the only chance you really had was to try the meds I suggested. Those would work in the water and do not need to be fed.
 
Have a read here which is the site I linked you to above. there are two articles there relevant to the meds and your prblem.Here is a quick quote from one:

The hydra-killing Flubendazole that I used in my office aquarium to eradicate hydra led me to a larger realization. The “wasting” fish in that tank seemed to become cured when I added Flubendazole to the water. Whoa! This was quite a remarkable revelation. My intent was to remove the hydra and any possible nematodes and, to my surprise, the disease I have found to be associated with a particular protozoan species was cured.

from http/www.inkmkr.com/Fish/FlubendazoleArticle.pdf
 
Read this one as well http/www.inkmkr.com/Fish/FlubendazoleTreatment.pdf

Well I wish there were aquarium stores in my area where I could get these meds.. The stores I have called do not have this stuff. They only carry mainstream, popular medicines. They only had one kind of medicine brand that even had metronidazole in it.

 

[Fluval-1200]

Have you bare bottomed the tank yet?

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Jackiee- I assume you must not live in the USA. You neglected to put your location in the info. This makes it hard for readers on this multinational site to know what meds are available to you. Here in the states we have access to about any fish med you can name and more that work well but are not even for fish. The meds I suggested would not normally be available at most fish and pet stores, I get mine online.
 
What I am curious about is how you got hold of the metro outside of the USA since I had thought that it was not available in the UK, Australia or NZ.
 
The meds I suggested you could have had in the tank already in the States simply by ordering from the site to which I linked you. They would have sent them overnight.

 

[Jackiee]

Jackiee- I assume you must not live in the USA. You neglected to put your location in the info. This makes it hard for readers on this multinational site to know what meds are available to you. Here in the states we have access to about any fish med you can name and more that work well but are not even for fish. The meds I suggested would not normally be available at most fish and pet stores, I get mine online.
 
What I am curious about is how you got hold of the metro outside of the USA since I had thought that it was not available in the UK, Australia or NZ.
 
The meds I suggested you could have had in the tank already in the States simply by ordering from the site to which I linked you. They would have sent them overnight.

I do live in the USA. I was not aware that those meds wouldn't be available at a store, that's why I called around looking for them. I had no means of purchasing online myself before, but I have now completed a form on the website you recommended to me and will be having a family member pay for it via Paypal to get it shipped to me.. I had mentioned before that I only have access to commercial fish stores such as Petsmart and Petco. And they are crap when it comes to disease treatment evidently.

Have you bare bottomed the tank yet?

I removed most of the gravel. There was only a very thin layer to begin with.

 

[Jackiee]

Did another water change on his tank.. Dosing with Prime to keep toxicity down and treating with pimafix for the time being to keep his wound from getting secondary infection. Temp is still at 86. Tank has been continually blacked out all day and night. Still keeping food available to him. Zuchini and cucumber.

 

[Jackiee]

eyes back to normal.. Ive noticed him blinking from time to time now again as well. He used to do this before when he was healthy, but when he got sick and his eyes sunk in, he no longer blinked. Tried getting a picture of his belly but he didn't feel like getting on the glass today.. When I removed his gravel, I seen what seemed to be small pieces of his dark skin that had flaked off.. Does anybody know why is belly is actually doing this? The entire area of his stomach where the suction wound was is now shed of all it's normal dark skin and is completely pink.. I've read that pink is good because it means it is healing skin and not dying skin.. Is this normal to see after a wound?

 

[looking-glass]

from that picture he looks like hes improved so fingers crossed at an un educated guess i would imagine the pinks skin is a good sign, just like when a scab first come of our skin or something like that 

 

[Jackiee]

from that picture he looks like hes improved so fingers crossed at an un educated guess i would imagine the pinks skin is a good sign, just like when a scab first come of our skin or something like that

That's what I'm hoping.. He's very very responsive to me the past couple days as well.. Before, he would just sit there regardless of my movements or anything.. But today when I was changing his water, I seen his eyes respond to my hand movement, following me, quick to move around as soon as my hand entered the tank.. He wasn't like that before. It seems he's gotten some strength back but I don't know how! Like I said, I can't see any sign of him having eaten!