very sick green spot puffer

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.
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majikgal
Puffer Fry
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Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2017 4:23 pm
Location (country): United States of America

very sick green spot puffer

Post by majikgal »

hi, i got a green spot puffer almost 3 weeks ago. she was very very emaciated and sick looking in the fish store because she had been improperly fed. despite this, i decided to bring her home anyways to nurse her back to health and be a buddy for my green spot that ive had since the beginning of october. ive essentially been trying to fatten her up this whole time and have offered a wide variety of foods that i thought she could possibly eat even with her beak horribly overgrown. i knew before i paid for her that it needed to be trimmed, but shes so close to starving to death and very weak that i wanted to try and get her healthier before i tried the potentially stressful procedure. my question is, is there any way to somehow forcefeed her to get her healthier before this, or should i attempt to trim here beak as she is now since she will definately die if i dont. would i perhaps be able to skip the sedative to make it less risky since she is a very affectionate fish and seems to enjoy being handled (she will swim right into my open hand when i put it in to do tank maintanence and everything) Thank you in advance for any advice you might have, i really want to save her because shes such a sweetheart!
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Pufferpunk
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Re: very sick green spot puffer

Post by Pufferpunk »

So sorry it's taken this long to respond. I was on vacation all week. Unfortunately, I'm afraid the puffer is gone by now? If not, I believe a puffer that size would be too small to force-feed.
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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hadla
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Re: very sick green spot puffer

Post by hadla »

Hope she's still alive... always buy healthy looking puffs! Buying sick ones that aren't taken care of by the lfs just makes them order more :(
Never trust big puffers. The fingers you save may be your own. -RTR
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