The Puffer Forum

Ive had this fish for about 1 week, he has been swimming and eating normal, yesterday morning i noticed he was hiding, after some searching i found him hiding under a rock down in the sand, i know puffers have big personality and can get in a bad mood sometimes but he did not come out and eat all day. i tested water and found 0 ammonia 0 nitrite and less then 5 ppm nitrate. salinity 1.025. last night i did a 30 gallon water change (150 gallon tank) during the water change he came out and i was able to see white flakes hanging on his skin, i thought it was sand but wasn't possessive so i treated the tank with ick-x. a few hours later i found him to have rapid breathing and was laying on the ground. i pulled him out late last night and did a fresh water dip. this morning he is still breathing rapidly and laying on the ground, i retested and found 0 ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, ph was low 8.0 and salinity was high, 1.029. i adjusted the salinity and added an air stone to try and get the ph back up.

Thank you so any help

I would suggest is velvet... The behavioral symptoms add up and it tends to manifest itself slightly differently in scaleless fish - resulting in lots of slime sloughing. Given the potential susceptibility to copper sensitivity, I would recommend hybrid TTM. FW dips in the meantime will buy time. If the TTM element is doable, repeated 10 min baths in tank water with hydrogen peroxide at 75ppm - twice every 24 hours - should eradicate it over 48 hours.