Fahaka Puffer Sick. Advice please.

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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Read this before posting!!

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.
12345
Puffer Fry
Posts: 29
Joined: Tue May 31, 2011 1:15 am
Location (country): USA

Re: Fahaka Puffer Sick. Advice please.

Post by 12345 »

I've been keeping up with the water changes and he was not interested in his staple of shrimp.

I also tried frozen krill, bloodworms, live night crawlers, and live red wrigglers.

He swims up and down the tank like he is starving or wants attention but does not really eat.

Finally gave tried live black worms last night and he began to eat them. I talked to a local fish store that are very into puffers and have 2 MBUs as displays.

They told me that there are times that puffers are smart enough to not eat anything that resembles something that got them sick before. He was the one that recommended to try live black worms. So I am glad that he is eating again for now.

He ate some last night and I saw large amount of black/brown poop this morning. So I am guessing he is not clogged up which is great news as well.
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Pufferpunk
Queen Admin
Posts: 32775
Joined: Tue May 31, 2005 11:06 am
Gender: Female
My Puffers: Filbert, the 12" T lineatus
Punkster, the 4" red T miurus
Mongo, the 4" A modestus
2 T biocellatus
C valentini
C coranata
C papuan
Also kept:
lorteti
DPs
suvattii
burrfish
T niphobles
Location (country): USA, Greenville, SC
Location: Chicago
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Re: Fahaka Puffer Sick. Advice please.

Post by Pufferpunk »

I always gut-load the worms I feed to my fish. Crush flakes or grind up some FD krill/plankton & add Vita-chem to their holding container.
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...

"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
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