so i got home from work today and saw my fuzzy dwarf lion acting kinda weird, looked at him and noticed that his scales on both sides of his body had been ripped off!?!?!?!??! so he died a few minutes later and i pulled him out and looked him over, no fin damage all his spikes were fine just from gill to tail he was scaleless like something scraped him off. any ideas? all my pumps are 100% fish safe no one in the tank is big or stupid enough to try to eat him and i have no other animals in my house.

It could have had some sort of parasite and it might have been rubbing itself against the rocks. Or it got stuck somewhere and fought to get out. Just some ideas.

I agree it had to be some sort of parasite that he tried to get off by rubbing on the rocks.