Stuff coming out of puffy's mouth? - Pictures

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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StormySkiez
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Re: Stuff coming out of puffy's mouth? - Pictures

Post by StormySkiez »

Glad to hear! You have got to follow through with the complete med treatment so the IP's do not become immune. Also I have read here not all worms will be expelled, it depends on the type of worm it is.
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Re: Stuff coming out of puffy's mouth? - Pictures

Post by Agnate »

Christemo wrote:I think I'm going to do a smaller treatment later because he hasn't expelled the worms yet

Do NOT do "smaller" treatments with any parasite medication. Use the recommended amount every time. Lowering the dosage can make the parasites immune, which is a very, very bad thing.

Also, when a fish is heavily infested with parasites, you actually don't want them to expel all of the worms at once. Purging them of so many at once can cause a huge strain on the fish, and can actually cause them to perish. This isn't to say that you shouldn't continue dosing, but I just wanted to point out that a "fixed in one dose" approach shouldn't be the ultimate aim of an IP treatment. :)

I'm glad to hear he's doing better! Stick with the treatment and make sure he gets some food (and vitamins, if you can get some) to build his immunity system back up.
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Re: Stuff coming out of puffy's mouth? - Pictures

Post by Iliveinazoo »

Has he started eating yet?
If not; have you tried live foods like brine shrimp or glassworm just to fatten him up a bit? the biting and spitting out sounds like my waspfish when he's snapped at a frozen bloodworm and realised that its not wriggling.
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Re: Stuff coming out of puffy's mouth? - Pictures

Post by Christemo »

He's just started nibbling on food today.. so I'll try that out. :D
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Re: Stuff coming out of puffy's mouth? - Pictures

Post by Myaj »

Great news!

Make sure you really vaccuum the substrate well, to clean out anything he's purged.
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Re: Stuff coming out of puffy's mouth? - Pictures

Post by Nick »

Don't be let down or assume failure if you see no visible worms purged. Protozoan internal parasites are very common and do not visibly purge like tapeworms other "real" worm IPs do.
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