F8 died out of nowhere, questions ?

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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sparks42
Figure 8 Puffer
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F8 died out of nowhere, questions ?

Post by sparks42 »

Hi there I'm not sure if you're supposed to flush puffer fish, or if they need to be burried.

Also while testing my water I realized I don't even know what proper pH should be.

He's been dead probably 24 hours now, I just wanted to wait and be sure as he is not floating, just on his side on the bottom but he is very obviously dead now, just trying to think of what coulda happened here. No recent food change, was just due for a water change.
It's just a little off to me that he's not floating.

Since day 1 he looked skinny so I treated him for IPs 3 times within about 6 months (last time was about 6 months ago) and he did not change shape or size at all, so i sfigured he was just shaped that way. Maybe that's what happened, but I doubt it as he was treated a full 3 times in 6 months.

Do people autopsy their puffers ? - what do you look for ?

I was wondering since he's on the bottom, maybe he swallowed a rock ?

Thank you
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J-P
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Re: F8 died out of nowhere, questions ?

Post by J-P »

AFAIK most recent death tend to stay on the bottom. Only older ones float because the decay build up gases in the tissue.

Just my theory ;)
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Re: F8 died out of nowhere, questions ?

Post by Blaine »

Being on the bottom is normal...like JP said. I would not bother with an autopsy unless you are trained in fish disease and anatomy...and hard to trace cause of death.

More info would help us to diagnose the problem. Answer the questions below and we'll see what's up.


1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate).

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?
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FADE2BLACK_1973
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Re: F8 died out of nowhere, questions ?

Post by FADE2BLACK_1973 »

Just wanted to add that brackish and SW ph should be around 8.2. Most of your sea salt mixes should help keep that buffered to that range along with most substrate.
Chris,


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