Just purchased a sick fahaka..
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.
-
Pufferpunk
- Queen Admin
- Posts: 32976
- Joined: Tue May 31, 2005 11:06 am
- Gender: Female
- My Puffers: Puffers I have kept:
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T niphobles - Location (country): USA, Greenville, SC
- Location: Greenville, SC
- Contact:
Re: Just purchased a sick fahaka..
You should be seeing worms in his poop soon!
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...
"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
Re: Just purchased a sick fahaka..
Okay the worms are coming out! i just saw one coming out of the anus area. The problem is that these worms are so thin and small that i can barely see em among the faeces. I basically just clear e entire stack of faeces..cant be bothered to check if theres worms in there 
Puffer seems to be feeling better now..now gotta try and fatten him up..hes still not eating the food by himself and i gotta put it directly at hes mouth..The blue tinge at hes eye is not so significant, n its more like a dark brown tinge.
Hes tail fin is still rather ragged like a row of bite marks (0.5cm each) along the edges. Its been this way since i had him & n i haven seen any significant improvement in the tail finnage. Is there any reason for this? Melafix definitely has no effect on this..
Puffer seems to be feeling better now..now gotta try and fatten him up..hes still not eating the food by himself and i gotta put it directly at hes mouth..The blue tinge at hes eye is not so significant, n its more like a dark brown tinge.
Hes tail fin is still rather ragged like a row of bite marks (0.5cm each) along the edges. Its been this way since i had him & n i haven seen any significant improvement in the tail finnage. Is there any reason for this? Melafix definitely has no effect on this..
Re: Just purchased a sick fahaka..
Okay my fahaka has been completely cured from hes worms and hes colour is getting much much better, he seemed like he was smiling in the morning BUT later in the day, he did something that really shocked me..it seems that he tried to jump out. He did this before in another occasion where he suddenly kept bobbing hes head out of the water as if trying to get some air in. But he was okay after that incident.
In this case, there was a big buldge in hes stomach after he 'bobbed' out & he started breathing really heavily. I read the puffer library about this and i tried to push out the bubble. I finally managed to 'burp' him after a few attempts (3 tries to be exact) and hes tummy seems to be back to normal for now. But now the problem is that he is breathing very heavily..seems like hes suffocating or something & hes swimming frantically back and forth in the tank. I added in more airstones and epsom salt to hopefully relieve him.
The trashing around when i tried to grab him gave him a few scars so i added a little melafix. I Just hope he pulls through this after all the effort that i did to save him. One problem after another..zzzzzzzz
Water parameters are fine, no heaters in the tank so it rules out electric surge. Maybe hes just really stressed from the 'burping' incident. WIll check on him tmr morning. Its 12am at my side now.
In this case, there was a big buldge in hes stomach after he 'bobbed' out & he started breathing really heavily. I read the puffer library about this and i tried to push out the bubble. I finally managed to 'burp' him after a few attempts (3 tries to be exact) and hes tummy seems to be back to normal for now. But now the problem is that he is breathing very heavily..seems like hes suffocating or something & hes swimming frantically back and forth in the tank. I added in more airstones and epsom salt to hopefully relieve him.
The trashing around when i tried to grab him gave him a few scars so i added a little melafix. I Just hope he pulls through this after all the effort that i did to save him. One problem after another..zzzzzzzz
Water parameters are fine, no heaters in the tank so it rules out electric surge. Maybe hes just really stressed from the 'burping' incident. WIll check on him tmr morning. Its 12am at my side now.
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Pufferpunk
- Queen Admin
- Posts: 32976
- Joined: Tue May 31, 2005 11:06 am
- Gender: Female
- My Puffers: Puffers I have kept:
T lineatus
T miurus
A modestus
T biocellatus
C valentini
C coranata
C papuan
C lorteti
DPs
suvattii
burrfish
T niphobles - Location (country): USA, Greenville, SC
- Location: Greenville, SC
- Contact:
Re: Just purchased a sick fahaka..
My guess is stress from all that. Good thing it's nighttime--let him rest.
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...
"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
"The solution to pollution is dilution!"
Re: Just purchased a sick fahaka..
Just some additional info for puffer enthusiast:
Update: Sick fahaka (deceased)
My sick fahaka died this morning, lying on the tank substrate sideways in an awkard position with a bulge in the left side of the belly. This is the reason why puffers shd never ever be exposed to air (eg, when caught in a net, they tend to get stressed and puff up) because sometimes after they deflate, some of the air gets stuck in the body and it causes the puffer to suffocate. Another forumer in THEPufferFOrum lost hes mbu this way. i wrapped him up in newspaper with hes favourite white clams and secured it in a ziplock bag and disposed him.
My fahaka had this tendency to swim really fast to the surface especially when he was choking. There was once when he did that and some air got caught in hes belly. I had to get a tight grip of him and slowly massage the bubble OUTWARDS frm hes belly towards hes mouth and he will make a 'burp' noise. I guessed he did the same thing last night and the bubble was not removed fast enough. I checked him at 4 am and he was still fine & 8 am..dead. I already suspected something was wrong when he stopped eating on friday and kept hovering ard the surface in a daze.
Regarding hes camullanus worms, i managed to remove it completely using avitrol plus (bird dewormer containing levasimole & praziquantel) and he was making a good recovery. Only regret was that i didnt get a picture of him when he was getting better. I was mainly concern about the choking issue as it could be an indication that hes internal organs were permanently damaged from poor conditions. I ordered Vitachem from amazon and it finally came yesterday. Well i ordered 6 bottles especially to treat him and my first bottle is barely used and hes gone. Real disappointing.
So, just like to share with you guys some problems that will be faced when you keep puffers (im sure most of the members here know already ). I for one, invited problems when i made the decision to buy the sick puffer. But overall, im glad i did my best to ease hes suffering.
PS: Most of your frens/family will be really surprised that you keep puffers (poisonous) and keep asking you to show dem how the puffer puffs up. They do not realise the amount of harm caused to the puffer when he puffs up so please explain it to dem and do not show dem. I admit that im guilty of doing this when i first bought my GSPS.
Note: the fahaka in my avatar is still doing well, hes not the one who passed on
Update: Sick fahaka (deceased)
My sick fahaka died this morning, lying on the tank substrate sideways in an awkard position with a bulge in the left side of the belly. This is the reason why puffers shd never ever be exposed to air (eg, when caught in a net, they tend to get stressed and puff up) because sometimes after they deflate, some of the air gets stuck in the body and it causes the puffer to suffocate. Another forumer in THEPufferFOrum lost hes mbu this way. i wrapped him up in newspaper with hes favourite white clams and secured it in a ziplock bag and disposed him.
My fahaka had this tendency to swim really fast to the surface especially when he was choking. There was once when he did that and some air got caught in hes belly. I had to get a tight grip of him and slowly massage the bubble OUTWARDS frm hes belly towards hes mouth and he will make a 'burp' noise. I guessed he did the same thing last night and the bubble was not removed fast enough. I checked him at 4 am and he was still fine & 8 am..dead. I already suspected something was wrong when he stopped eating on friday and kept hovering ard the surface in a daze.
Regarding hes camullanus worms, i managed to remove it completely using avitrol plus (bird dewormer containing levasimole & praziquantel) and he was making a good recovery. Only regret was that i didnt get a picture of him when he was getting better. I was mainly concern about the choking issue as it could be an indication that hes internal organs were permanently damaged from poor conditions. I ordered Vitachem from amazon and it finally came yesterday. Well i ordered 6 bottles especially to treat him and my first bottle is barely used and hes gone. Real disappointing.
So, just like to share with you guys some problems that will be faced when you keep puffers (im sure most of the members here know already
). I for one, invited problems when i made the decision to buy the sick puffer. But overall, im glad i did my best to ease hes suffering.PS: Most of your frens/family will be really surprised that you keep puffers (poisonous) and keep asking you to show dem how the puffer puffs up. They do not realise the amount of harm caused to the puffer when he puffs up so please explain it to dem and do not show dem. I admit that im guilty of doing this when i first bought my GSPS.
Note: the fahaka in my avatar is still doing well, hes not the one who passed on
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doraemon
- Figure 8 Puffer
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1 Tetraodon lineatus (Asha) - Location (country): uk
- Location: midlands uk
Re: Just purchased a sick fahaka..
Im sorry for your loss Shagy..i know u fought hard for it 
I have 2 water water pugs that own me!!
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lesleyanndunn
- Fahaka Puffer
- Posts: 542
- Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2009 3:34 pm
- Gender: Female
- My Puffers: one fahaka ~ *Abe*
one palembang ~ *Spud*
one fahaka ~ *Kruger* (RIP) :(
also kept: DP's, GSP'S, and BBG's - Location (country): Bangor, UK
- Location: bangor, NI, UK
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J-P
- Former Staff Member
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- Location: Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan
Re: Just purchased a sick fahaka..
That is too bad... I'm sorry
if you follow me, you avoid stepping in the crap that I just did...
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZR55G ... pqlgec1A2Q
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZR55G ... pqlgec1A2Q