8 figure puffers feel 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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Alexander Kh
Puffer Fry
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2018 4:35 pm
Location (country): Ukraine

8 figure puffers feel sick

Post by Alexander Kh »

Hi , 2 weeks ago has been set up tank 150 gal, 1 week ago were added 4 biocellatus (2")and 4 GSP (1 1/4 ")(i know -the tank isn't cycled).
Water: Ph 7.8 , sal. 0.005 and rising +0.001 p/week (table salt NaCl) , temp. 77F . Changes 25% twice a week.Ammonia 0,5mg/l. Nitrate and nitrite can't say anything rifht now, tests are out of date.
Filtration water pump power head with PU sponge , 4 tank value p/hour.
Feeding: 1 time p/day, freezed squid or 3 shrimps (1 1/2 inch) or 3 live slugs (of the same size) .

soon after the puffers was bought i saw small (5mm) transparent threads under the mouth of the one of 8-fig.puffer . And eye of the other one 8FP became cloudy . Puffers were breathing very often, one of them (maybe not only one) had constantly opened one gill , and gill on the other side constantly was closed and flipnear it kept close to the body.

I had a lot of different freshwater tanks before, and problems like that (whith warms and damadged by them gills) were solved many times whith praziquantel based drugs. the puffers had 2-hour "bath" two times at this week,threads disappeared ,but problems whith breathing and gills are present. Some of them eat very bad , lay on the ground or quickly moving near front side of the tank/

It all about 8FP, GSP have natural behavior . They eat very well , slowly moving around the tank , exploring all around. Only one of them have a little clouded eye now.

I don't know what i have to do now . It is first time when i have such problems whith tank starting.


English is not my native language, so please be kind to my mistakes.
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