Porcupine Puffer Has Fin Rot and Popeye

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Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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puffers
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Porcupine Puffer Has Fin Rot and Popeye

Post by puffers »

Help! My porcupine puffer has had fin rot for about 2 weeks now. Also, his left eye has a large amount of blood in it and it also has a bit of popeye. The puffer can't see out of that eye. pH: 8.0 Ammonia: 0 Nitrites: 0 Nitrates: 0 Salinity: 1.023 The tank is a 75 gallon with the porcupine puffer inside along with a striped squirrelfish, a bluefin damsel, and a snowflake moray. He is the dominant fish in the tank, and the fish never bully or bite him. I feed him 1 or 2 small clams every other day and change 5 gallons of water every week. In the last week, I have done some cleaning. While cleaning, I noticed small white sea cucumber things in the overflow, and I cleaned them out of the tank. Does anybody have an idea of what they are? Also, I have added half the recommended dose of Melafix every day for 7 days to try to cure his fin rot. It hasn't really helped. My aquarium has been set up for 2 years, and I cycled it for 1 month. Also, my puffer now swims at a slight angle with the bloody eye closer to the surface. Are there any medicines other than Melafix that can help fin rot and/or popeye?
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Re: Porcupine Puffer Has Fin Rot and Popeye

Post by Pufferpunk »

If you're having that many bacterial issues with your puffer, there's something wrong with your water parameters. With all those fish in there, you should be showing some nitrate. Your tank is way overstocked. Are those fish mature size? Never dose 1/2 of what a manufacturer recommends--it can make the bacteria immune to the product.
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...

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Re: Porcupine Puffer Has Fin Rot and Popeye

Post by Myaj »

I would agree, for a tank that heavily stocked you are probably not getting accurate nitrate readings. Water changes (watch your salinity closely so you don't crash the tank), full doses of melafix and start thinking about a larger tank or homes for some of those fish.. a 75 isn't nearly big enough for all of them.

Fin rot is almost always due to poor water quality.. they get a scrape and instead of healing cleanly it gets all nasty due to the water quality. So no matter what your test readings, I would work on getting that water nice and clean with a series of water changes, start smaller since you've only been doing 5 gallons at a time, but do increasingly large ones over the next few days.
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