Sailfin pleco shedding slime coat?

[sunscream1488]

Looks like my 9 inch sailfin is shedding. Any thoughts on this? Disease? He's acting perfectly normal, eating , and everything. Sorry not a good pic but you can see a little white stuff hanging off him.

[madagascariensis]

Is the water in your aquarium generally cloudy? How long ago did the symptoms appear?

[sunscream1488]

Is the water in your aquarium generally cloudy? How long ago did the symptoms appear?

I just transferred my fish into this bigger tank and the new substrate made the water cloudy. Didn't have time to rinse. It's just recently I've noticed it. I'm keeping an eye on him. When I turn the lights on today I'll check him out. He's been growing at a really fast rate. I got him a year ago and he was only about 2.5 inches long and now he's 8 to 9 inches. I read that they can shed when growing so I'm thinking that's what it is since it's kinda falling off.

[sunscream1488]

Is the water in your aquarium generally cloudy? How long ago did the symptoms appear?

Also since I transferred all my fish from 2 tanks to one , it could be a light cycle going on because I used new substrate and a lot of new water. I used the filters from my old tanks and all the decorations and some of the old gravel so there shouldn't full a full on nitrogen cycle. So the cloudiness could also be a bacteria bloom

[madagascariensis]

Fish don't shed the way reptiles do. The slime coat is constantly produced and degraded. However, they can overproduce if something is irritating them, which results in a thick sloughing coat. If you recently moved the fish it is likely that something in the water is bothering it.

[fissh]

Cloudy water and you pleco slimming up sounds like you have a nitrogen cycle starting, do you have a test kit?

[sunscream1488]

Cloudy water and you pleco slimming up sounds like you have a nitrogen cycle starting, do you have a test kit?

Yeah it's cycling. Hopefully it won't be that bad. I'm putting extra bacteria in it. I tested the water yesterday and I have .50 ammonia and .50 nitrite

[Slaphppy7]

What kind of test kit do you have?

You need to be doing daily water changes with Prime to get those levels down as much as possible

[sunscream1488]

What kind of test kit do you have?

You need to be doing daily water changes with Prime to get those levels down as much as possible

I checked the water again and the levels were lower. There was very little to no nitrite and possibly .25 ammonia but that might be iffy too. I use an API master kit.

[Slaphppy7]

You're goal is to get them both down to 0, I would be doing 50% (at least) daily WC's until that happens.

What is your nitrAte reading?...usually a tank will always have some of them, but you want their levels to be at .20 or lower, as well