urgent help with fahaka

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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Sparkyned
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urgent help with fahaka

Post by Sparkyned »

Last night my fahaka ripped his skin, I really do no what on cos the decor is minimal, so he's like ripped his skin now he has a loose flap ov skin, he doent seem affected in any way still swimming fine etc and it did not bleed, but it looks terrible and I wanna know if it will heal plase? And if there's anyway I can help it to heal,
Thanks
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Hilly
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Re: urgent help with fahaka

Post by Hilly »

Keep the water pristine, treat with Melafix and it should heal fine. Do a water change treat tank, I generally like to wait a couple of days before treating again with Melafix, I might do a small water change in between and then the following day retreat with Mealfix again.
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Re: urgent help with fahaka

Post by pufferpuggirl »

Just a reminder to make sure you've got extra oxygen (airstone) going into that tank when using either Melafix or Pimafix, as it tends to make it difficult for the puffer to get enough oxygen.
Good luck with your Fahaka healing his wound.
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Pufferpunk
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Re: urgent help with fahaka

Post by Pufferpunk »

Do a close inspection of all your decor. My fahaka made a huge movement yesterday (scared the dog--he ran out of the room!) & splashed all over me, even with the top on the tank. To tear the thick spine-covered skin, there has to be something very sharp in there to slice that open. How big is the fish & how big is the tank?

Can you post a FTS & one of the fish's damage?
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davew
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Re: urgent help with fahaka

Post by davew »

just a thought if its a bad rip i wonder if it would be possible to use super glue to stick it down they sometimes use it in A and E
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Dadof4
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Re: urgent help with fahaka

Post by Dadof4 »

Super-glue isn't the answer for avulsed skin on a puffer. Their skin isn't very vascular and the flap will have too much die off, good source of infection. Melafix and pristine water is the key, also like Pufferpunk is alluding to, find the source of the injury so it doesn't happen again.
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Re: urgent help with fahaka

Post by Ohyouknow »

How is he doing??
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