Is this Ick? New to puffers, want to confirm before treating

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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Dan Snow
Puffer Fry
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jun 01, 2017 6:21 pm
Location (country): Phoenix, Arizona, USA

Is this Ick? New to puffers, want to confirm before treating

Post by Dan Snow »

Hello. I'm new to keeping puffers. I recently acquired one at the local walmart and it appears the little guy might have ick.
My tank is a 29 gal currently a year old fully cycled; Ammonia levels are zeroed out, Nitrites at 0.1 and my Nitrates are 10ppm. This tank cycled pretty quick due to using using existing media and external eheim from an old tank.
In the tank I have the one GSP and five corydoras.
I feed once daily, 50% of what I put in the tank are flakes for the corys, 25% dried brine shrimp and 25% dried bloodworms. I know that in the very near future I will need to feed snails bi-weekly. Looking at the pictures can anyone tell me if this looks like icy/ick to them? I moved him into a large vase to get the pictures since it was pretty much impossible in the tank. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w50 ... knkptp.jpg
http://i1079.photobucket.com/albums/w50 ... fqi7dm.jpg
Bleedingheartmommy
Figure 8 Puffer
Posts: 185
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2016 9:39 pm
My Puffers: Honey (SIP Cantaloupe): C. Travancoricus
Mad Max: P. Cochinchinensis
Apollo: T. Miurus
(SIP Bonnie) Clyde: C. Irrubesco
SIP Orchid
Location (country): USA-Seattle, WA

Re: Is this Ick? New to puffers, want to confirm before treating

Post by Bleedingheartmommy »

In my unprofessional opinion, yes. I have treated many teopicals for ICH however I am yet to need to treat a puffer for it yet. There is a great article here on treating ICH in puffers:

library/hospital/fwich/#more-87
"Genetics loads the gun, and environment pulls the trigger."-Brené Brown
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