Our plecostamus has been “hanging” under one of the tank decorations for the last three or four days. Normally we find him hanging from the side of the tank or resting, dorsal fin up, on the bottom of the tank. Lately, he has been under one of the decorations, dorsal fin down. (We have been wondering how he could remain in this position but think we have discovered the answer…) Today when I happened to see him moving about the tank (50 gallon community with about two dozen mixed tetras and a pair of African dwarf frogs) he seems bloated and also seems to bo positively buoyant. He was on the glass of the tank just below the surface but in an unusual position. Normally, he hangs from the glass face up but today he was parallel with the surface of the water. He seemed not to be “stuck” to the glass, so that the current of water from the power bottom filter started to push him downstream. When he tried to recover from this, I noticed that his abdomen is bloated and that he seemed to be struggling to reach the bottom of the tank, suggesting that maybe he is bloated with gas. We feed the tank frozen blood worms (primarily for the frogs), frozen brine shrimp and miscellaneous food flakes (for the general population) and algae flakes (for the pleco.) Help?

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