Female BN Pleco eggbound?

[NWAquariumFan]

A Few months ago, I got a female Super Red BN Pleco for my established 35 gallon tank.  She was pretty little and grew fairly quickly. She ate all the biofilm on my mopani wood and kept the aquarium really clean. She loved zucchini slices, and ate med cichlid sinking pellets from Hikari, along with bottom feeder wafers and algae wafers.  She started getting pretty round in the belly, and stopped eating well  and I treated the tank w/ Paracleanse as directed and gravel vacc’d and water changed.  Kept an eye on the parameters and never experienced an ammonia or nitrite spike, Both stayed at 0, w/ Nitrates at 20, pH remaining stable at 7.4, Temp at 77.  She started eating again for a few days, but 2 weeks later she died.  I’m wondering if she was eggbound?

This is heavily planted tank w/ mopani wood, and lots of caves and hiding places w/in the hard scape.

 

No one else in the tank is having any issues and it’s been a stable tank for over a year w/ no new occupants.

 

This weekend I brought home a female Albino BN Pleco from the ACO store.  I asked about the possibility of being eggbound. The attendant told me that it won’t happen. They will either lay the eggs and the other inhabitants will eat them OR they will reabsob them.  However, I’ve been looking online and I’ve seen a lot of people talk about losing their females to egg binding.  So, frustration w/ the attendant aside, is there anything I can do to prevent egg binding? 

 

 

[CJs Aquatics]

I’m no expert on being egg bound but I think a high quality diet and clean water with stable water parameters is probably the best way to prevent it from happening. 

[Colu]

Adding a male bristlenose will also prevent your female from becoming egg bound if you don't want to be over run with fry I would just keep a male bristlenose if your not interested in breeding them