carinotetraodon salivator not doing so well

[J-P]

maybe... typically no, but any deficiency due to parasites might cause any number of side symptoms.

[timwag2001]

is seachem paragaurd safe for my puffer?

[J-P]

no...

I have experience with that... it is a broad spectrum antibiotic / anti fungal / anti parasite fix that will trash your biofilter.

Only use in a QT tank.

I treated my 500 gal with that stuff at 1/2 dose and had to cycle it again after the meds took its course.

Only use that product in a QT / controlled environment. Puffers being scaleless I would caution against it. At 1/2 the dose that is powerful stuff.

[timwag2001]

anything you would recommend? its my favorite fish by far and i would hate to lose him

[J-P]

I would say the jungle fizz tabs but wait until some of the higher ups confirm or deny.

[nmonks]

Greetings,

Your water is a bit soft, and swelling can easily be caused by problems with osmoregulation. Yes, these puffers come from soft water. But it's important to remember two things. Firstly, filter bacteria prefer hard, basic water. They work less and less well as hardness and pH drop; below pH 6 they essentially don't work at all, at least not under lab conditions. Unless you have an overwhelming reason to do otherwise, aquaria are best maintained at or above pH 7 and with hardness levels of at least 5 and preferably 10+ degrees dH.

Secondly, what fish experience in the wild is not necessarily that which is best in captivity. Wild mollies undoubtedly come from freshwater habitats more often brackish water ones, but in captivity maintenance under brackish conditions is consistently easier. The same holds for numerous other livebearers, killifish and gobies. Puffers resemble those groups of fish in being recent immigrants from the sea, so my guess would be that osmotic stress is something they're equally sensitive to. Maintenance of puffers in at-least moderately hard water seems to work well, and the use of brackish water works more safely for treating whitespot, Costia, etc. than the use of medications.

If this was me, and the puffer was merely showing vague symptoms of stress, I'd transfer the fish to hard, slightly saline water (3-5 grammes marine salt mix/litre) and see what happened. I've done this with sickly C. irrubesco and it worked well, and funnily enough, just a couple of days ago I did this to treat a female Limia that was showing bloating and perhaps early signs of dropsy. She pepped right up overnight.

Treating for internal parasites is one of the vague things I don't recommend. I'd try and reduce osmotic stress first, and see if the puffer improves under its own steam. Parasitic worms can be a problem with wild-caught fish, but my impression is that they are rarely life-threatening unless there's some other factor at work weakening the host.

Cheers, Neale

[timwag2001]

what are your thoughts about the sores under his face nmonks?

[nmonks]

Difficult to say without a photo. But Costia infections seem common with this genus, and left untreated these will turn from grey patches of slime to bloody patches of sore skin. Easily treated in various ways; primarily with formalin-based medications, but I've found seawater dips especially useful at clearing them up if used alongside 3-5 g/l in the aquarium.

Cheers, Neale

what are your thoughts about the sores under his face nmonks?

[RTR]

Aside: FW hobbyists who have not worked with high-light full supplement tanks have no clue as to what a really active high plant biomass can extract from the water. To be honest, it can be scary. So the supplements may seem excessive to many folk here - but the fact is is that they do not hang around, especially when you use EI and are consistent with the water changes.

Overall, I second Neale Monks' comments on the housing of the puffer in such water though. If you want a specimen fish in this soft tank, go with a first division fish from rainforest conditions over geologic time, not a puffer.

I would overall be more concerned with the omolarity of the puffer tank not being optimum for captive care than fretting about the possibility (although quite real) of IPs. The sores would be of more concern to me, but if it should be a total water profile issue, harder and at least closer to alkaline water would be my first treatment effort. personally I have never had to resort to adding marine mix to my FW tanks, but I have moderately hard, moderately alkaline water from the tap, and have for the last two generations. My tap is actually fine for all the FW puffs I have kept, although that genus is one I have very little personal experience in long term handing beyond the DP.

What is your source water like? Could it be suitable for the puffer without using supplemented RO?

[timwag2001]

thanks for trying to help everyone. he didnt make it. the sores looked much worse when i took him out of the tank then they did yesterday. i definately think it was the problem and i was thinking that it was bacterial (although i dont really know too much about fish disease). wish i had a camera so i could take pics

[J-P]

aww that sucks!

Hard to loose him after all this effort.

[RTR]

But there is a valuable lesson for everyone to get as a take-home. We are not re-creating nature,as in the wild. That is beyond us, in large part due to scale. We are instead creating micro-environments which will hopefully prove relatively stable and healthy long-term care for our captives. They may or may not match the conditions from which the fish originally came. That match is in fact for most fish less significant than the long-term stability of what we can and do provide, and its suitability to support health, long life, and eventually reproduction of our fish in captivity.. .

We are in fact creating domesticated animals. There eventually is a selection process involved, and the "hobby strains" of fish may or may not be suited to life in the wild. Hobby Angelfish have been tank bred and color and form selected for so many generations that they might or might not survive in the wild. But their close kin, the Altum Angels, have not yet been domesticated at all.

Only DPs are really beginning to be domesticated among the puffers. The lurkers should follow before too long. The others present some non-trivial challenges, especially those with planktonic larval stages. But multiple reef fish have been reared in captivity, so it is possible. That is the big challenge for the next generation of hobbyists. We need to be able to breed these fish, now that we can keep many of them for long, healthy lives in captivity.