Porcupine Puffer not eating or swimming?! HELP

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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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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Kac527
Puffer Fry
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2014 11:19 pm
Location (country): United States

Porcupine Puffer not eating or swimming?! HELP

Post by Kac527 »

My porcupine puffer has not eaten today, and had little interest of food yesterday. For the past couple of days, he's just been floating in the tank, occasionally lying down. However, today, he's been lying down at the back of the tank behind some rocks. He's breathing just a tad bit too hard, and it almost looks like he has the hiccups.

We've tried to get him to swim, but he seems to be struggling. He was almost wiggling on the ground.

About two weeks back, we went on a short vacation, for about 4 days and had a relative feed the little porcupine. (We've been feeding it frozen sheets of shrimp.) When we came back, we noticed he had white spots on his back, and some on his fin. We assumed it was ich, and we left him to heal for a few days to see if he could get better on his own. At that time, he was swimming fine, up and down, all over the tank. His appetite was great, he was even spitting water for food. Though a few days later, the other puffer kept in the same tank, a dogface, died due to what I think was a bacterial infection. The porcupine seemed to kind of cuddle with him, even though the dogface didn't like it. After Dogface's death, the porcupine would just float around the tank. His appetite decreased (if that makes sense), until he hasn't been eating at all. We tried feeding him what we normally do (the frozen shrimp sheets) and tried feeding it frozen krill, but he had no interest. He is now the only fish in the tank. Because of his ich we dipped him (after we tried feeding), and now he's been at the bottom of the tank ever since. We added the bubble pump (or whichever you call it) in the tank to maybe gain his interest.

The tank is 100 gallons, and perhaps a little lonely for only a three- four inch puffer. We have LR in it, with a wet and dry filter system. The water conditions is all right, but it certainly isn't the best. The nitrite is between 0-.25 i believe, and about the same for ammonia. PH is 8.0 the last time I checked. A few days ago, the nitrite levels were around 0, same for ammonia.

Could it be possible that he is stressed from the death of Dogface? Or stressed from the dip? It's been around maybe 6-7 hours since we dipped him. Or is it the water levels? The puffer is relatively new, only been in the tank for a little over a month now I believe.

Any advice? I'm not fish expert, and really it isn't my tank, but my sister's. But poor little Piney (porcupine) seems unhappy, and even sick. Thanks in advanced. Just worried.
Kac527
Puffer Fry
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Aug 15, 2014 11:19 pm
Location (country): United States

Re: Porcupine Puffer not eating or swimming?! HELP

Post by Kac527 »

Please? Anyone? :/ Could it be the DipAway that's bothering him? Can it poison a fish?
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