GSP with a white spot

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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.

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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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lmsmith
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GSP with a white spot

Post by lmsmith »

One of my GSPs has a white spot. Just one, on its back just before its tail. Bill is about 2 inches long, and is nice and fat and healthy. His spot is about 3mm in diameter, and is not fluffy. It's not like one of his black spots has turned into a white one, it looks more like he's rubbed himself on something. It's been like that for about a week, and isn't changing at all.

I've upped my water changes to 3 times a week see if it will help, but otherwise, nothing has changed. The tank has been up and running for about 8 months (but I used a 2yr old established filter), and the puffers are about 3 months old.

My ammonia, nitrates and nitrites are too low to pick up, pH is about 7.8 (normal). He's in brackish water, about 1.008SG. The other puffer is totally fine, and Bill is acting normal too. I'll try to get some pics, but does anyone have any ideas what it might be?
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edmlfc1
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Re: GSP with a white spot

Post by edmlfc1 »

If you could get a picture of the spot we may be able to help you better. Until then I would use melafix.
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Re: GSP with a white spot

Post by Nick »

Could be a puffer bite. Sometimes a hard scrape of any kind, including from another puffer beak, can scrape the pigment off the outside of the skin. My GSP Jillybean gets white lines on her face from forcing it into the live rock too hard when going for isopods, and I have seen puffer bites do the same thing.
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Re: GSP with a white spot

Post by Pufferpunk »

I find spots like that usually go away but I use Melafix anyway. Keep an eye on it for any changes.
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