GSP... belly decay?

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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toffeecake
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GSP... belly decay?

Post by toffeecake »

1) pH 7, freshwater, 'new tank' uncycled
2) 15 gallon on its own
3) -
4) -
5) Uncycled

Recently 'taken over' a green spotted puffer, previous owner kept it in a large chinese-styled gold fish bowl (10 gallon?) No filter or water changes. Puffer was sitting on bottom of tank (which was hideously dirty) and didn't put up a struggle when I fished him out.


So here's the problem: The patch of his belly where he was 'resting' on in the previous tank seems to be... missing? It kinda looks like a decayed hole/chunk of flesh gone, grey coloured. I have a feeling this is because he was motionless/swimming around on a very dirty tank floor...

Currently he's rubbing his belly on the tank floor (no substrate) swimming back and forth and the grey stuff is slowly being rubbed/peeled off

Actually a chunk of (what looks like a mass of grey flesh, pea sized) has JUST popped off...


Not sure what to do O_O
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PolishPuff
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Re: GSP... belly decay?

Post by PolishPuff »

I think your puffer suffers from IP's

library/hospital/internal-parasites-pre ... treatment/
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J-P
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Re: GSP... belly decay?

Post by J-P »

if you follow me, you avoid stepping in the crap that I just did...

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZR55G ... pqlgec1A2Q
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Flutter
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Re: GSP... belly decay?

Post by Flutter »

That sounds quite unpleasant. Fortunately fish are excellent regenerators of tissue. I'd aim for very clean water, very good food, and probably some Melafix. Do you have some used FW media that you can put in the filter?
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purplecandle
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Re: GSP... belly decay?

Post by purplecandle »

It takes a lot to get a chunk out of a puffers stretchy skin, even bites from other puffers rarely do that.

This sounds bacterial, or like some type of infection.

I agree with clean water and melafix, but you may need some medicine.

If you could get a picture, that would be very helpful in determing what type of medicine you need.
Image
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