Newbie Treatment Question

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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Puffpuff3
Puffer Fry
Posts: 29
Joined: Fri Oct 17, 2008 3:35 pm
My Puffers: A small Green Spotted Puffer
Location: VA, USA

Newbie Treatment Question

Post by Puffpuff3 »

I'm new at all this so I just had a question about treating sickness in GSP's, should the need to know ever arise. Since they are brackish water, do I treat them with Marine medicines or Freshwater ones like those by API?
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marksrush
Fahaka Puffer
Posts: 856
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2008 8:10 pm
Gender: Male
My Puffers: One GSP.
Location (country): USA
Location: Raymore, Missouri USA

Re: Newbie Treatment Question

Post by marksrush »

I would guess that it depends on how salty your brackish environment is, although some meds work in either environment. From what I've read, internal parasite meds seem to be like that.
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t1gerbee
Fahaka Puffer
Posts: 831
Joined: Mon Sep 17, 2007 5:10 am
My Puffers: 1 x Ceylon + 1 x GSP + 1 x stars and stripes (juv) -Marine
(Non puffs-)
4 x clowns
1 x Oscar-Tropical
3 x Convicts-Tropical
1 x Map Turtle-tropical
2 x Plecs-Tropical
2 x goldfish
Location: london

Re: Newbie Treatment Question

Post by t1gerbee »

puffers are very sensitive to meds... so it's best to check all meds on here before administering.

Melafix is always a good place to start... :-)
1 x 90G Juv stars and stripes puffer, Ceylon Puffer + GSP + 2 black clowns
1 x 30G LPS Reef
1 x 30G 1 x Blind goldfish :-)
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Myaj
Tech Team
Posts: 4587
Joined: Sat Jun 04, 2005 12:27 pm
Gender: Female
My Puffers: Bubba, turgidus
Paris, lined burrfish
Location: SE Wisconsin
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Re: Newbie Treatment Question

Post by Myaj »

Right.. in most cases with puffers you do not want to use meds, often that makes them more sick than anything else.

Most of us just keep some Melafix and Pimafix on hand, maybe some deworming meds, and of course, salt.
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