Dog Face Puffer Sick

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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jerdena
Puffer Fry
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Aug 17, 2018 3:54 pm
Location (country): United States

Dog Face Puffer Sick

Post by jerdena »

I have had my tank for well over 2 years now. My dog face has been in the tank for over a year now. I feed him frozen brine shrimp and occasionally snails. I have live coral rock in my tank. It is a 75 gal. I have a protein skimmer as well and also have a filtration system that can handle up to 150 gal. I have never had any issues with my tank. I have 2 eels in the tank that seem fine. However my lionhead is not looking too good either. It just happened. They were fine yesterday. I checked my water parameters with an advanced testing kit and everything is perfect. I cleaned my protein skimmer and changed my carbon filters as well. My poor puffer went from brown to purple seriously and is laying at the bottom breathing heavily. before posting this I just now added Herbtana (100% natural expellent for parasitic diseases and I removed my carbon filters as instructed but still have the pump running and the protein skimmer. Please help if you can. Thank you so much.
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Pufferpunk
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Posts: 32764
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:
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suvattii
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Location (country): USA, Greenville, SC
Location: Chicago
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Re: Dog Face Puffer Sick

Post by Pufferpunk »

Why do you think there are parasites? Have you added anything new to the tank?
What is your water change schedule?
What is a "lionhead" & what symptoms is it showing?
Are you defrosting the puffer's food before feeding? Is the shrimp raw or cooked?
What are the EXACT water parameters?
What filtration are you using?
How much live rock do you have?
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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