my porcupine puffer has a swolen eye
Forum rules
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.
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.
my porcupine puffer has a swolen eye
we have just returned from 1 week holiday to find that our porc puffer has a swollen eye ball and socket his other eye is ok he is eating, no real difference in behaviour our tank is 110gallon tank with emeim filter and protein skimmer we do 50% water changes every 2 weeks the nitrite is 0 the nitrate is 50 ammonia 0.25 ph is 8.2 we set up tank over 1 year ago cycled the tank for aprox 5-6 weeks prior to putting tank mates in we have also 2 lion fish fox face rabbit fish a jeuvinile wrasse maroon clown and some live rock they seem to be fine, salinity is 1.020 and temp is 28 degrees the only real difference i can see is some green algae on the rocks thank you for any help forgot our feeding pattern is every couple of days the large fish get 2 fish or the odd mussel or prawn and peas the little ones get brine shrimp and spinach etc
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Nick
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Re: my porcupine puffer has a swolen eye
OK - many problems here. Ammonia .25 means that the tank has lost it's cycle somehow. Anything above zero is too high for a porc. The nitrate is a little high, probably because the tank is overstocked, but I can't know for sure unless you tell us the size of all the fish, if they're anywhere near adults, that's probably the culprit. One of the main problems is probably the feeder fish. Porcupine puffers aren't fast enough to catch small marine fish, so there is almost no fish in their wild diet. If the feeders are fresh water fish, they're even more unnatural a diet, and cause immune system problems and vitamin deficiencies, as well as introduce internal parasites, creating further problems. I"d say a combination of these factors has lead to a a weak immune system and an infection, possibly from a scrape on the live rock or from the lion fish spines. Pocupine puffers have a beak designed for primarily snails, claims, mussels, and similar invertebrates, and that needs to make up the bulk of their diet. First, do at least a 50% water change to get rid of the ammonia, and second, start feeding a higher nutrition diet of mostly mussel, clams, and snails, to boost the fish's immune response. Good luck.
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Re: my porcupine puffer has a swolen eye
thanks for help we will do water change and feed more mussels our wrasse, rabbit and clown are small young fish the lions are now quite large will keep you informed thanks for advice just want the little guy to be better