Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

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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Tripp
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Tripp »

So I have been to three different places to find earthworms / red wigglers and noone has them right now.
Stopped by the pet store and they only thing I found was meal worms. Saw an old post that RTR said he used to feed them to his puffers when they were young.
Tried that only one problem they float :( He wont come to the top. Chills down at the bottom or in the middle when he does decide to swim.

So taking those back today and will try and find some earthworms for him to try. At this rate I might just go dig a few up out back of the house if I can find some.
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bertie 83
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by bertie 83 »

A damp cloth or newspaper on the surface of the ground will bring worms up to the surface, also check under rocks. Mealworms tend to be too fatty for puffers, their skins are hard/impossible for them to digest also
It's amazing how easy maintenance is. If done regularly and thoroughly
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by RTR »

Mealworms with hardened bodies are not good foods for puffers. When I used mealworms, they were the young one, just hatched out and with relatively soft, generally white "skin". Otherwise they are not the best food as the puffers cannot easily segregate the indigestible hard "skin" from the internal mass if that life stage. At that time we were also breeding cage birds, so I bred several plastic bins of mealworms, selecting out the newly hatched white (soft-skinned) ones for feeding fish. The hard-skinned ones were for the birds. Shop-purchased containers of mealworms are likely too hard to be effective or desirable puffer food. Breeding them is too much trouble for a single puffer - you would get many hard mealworms which are not god puffer with only a few soft ones - it is only a matter of hours after hatching that the "skin" hardens.

HTH
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Pufferpunk »

Walmart has earthworms in their fishing dept.
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!"
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Tripp »

bertie 83 wrote:A damp cloth or newspaper on the surface of the ground will bring worms up to the surface, also check under rocks. Mealworms tend to be too fatty for puffers, their skins are hard/impossible for them to digest also
I will give that a shot tonight.
RTR wrote:Mealworms with hardened bodies are not good foods for puffers. When I used mealworms, they were the young one, just hatched out and with relatively soft, generally white "skin". Otherwise they are not the best food as the puffers cannot easily segregate the indigestible hard "skin" from the internal mass if that life stage. At that time we were also breeding cage birds, so I bred several plastic bins of mealworms, selecting out the newly hatched white (soft-skinned) ones for feeding fish. The hard-skinned ones were for the birds. Shop-purchased containers of mealworms are likely too hard to be effective or desirable puffer food. Breeding them is too much trouble for a single puffer - you would get many hard mealworms which are not god puffer with only a few soft ones - it is only a matter of hours after hatching that the "skin" hardens.

HTH
I bought the white meal worms that don’t have a hard shell yet. But they float so my puffer wants nothing to do with them.
Pufferpunk wrote:Walmart has earthworms in their fishing dept.
Tried two different Wal-Mart’s and both of them had Frozen rock hard worms all dead.
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Pufferpunk »

Stupid Walmart!
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!"
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Tripp »

Pufferpunk wrote:Stupid Walmart!
Agreed

Well took Bertie83 advice found a couple worms in the yard and washed them off.

Dexter wanted nothing to do with them.
Just sat half way buried and looked at me.
I honestly think if he could laugh at me he would "Stupid human"

Well that makes clams, krill, shrimp, worms, white meal worms, crayfish and snails in which he wants nothing to do with them.

I am wondering if he doesn't want to eat because of the chiclids.
My next thing would be removing them completely which would suck.
But go back to just him being in the tank :(
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Pufferpunk »

Guess there's only one way to find out...
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!"
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bertie 83
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by bertie 83 »

I would recommend that anyway, if they are picking at him it will eventually be that way soon, but with shredded cichlids. If you wish to keep something else with him try something placid and fast like rasporas or danios. Although they will also likely disappear
It's amazing how easy maintenance is. If done regularly and thoroughly
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Tripp »

bertie 83 wrote:I would recommend that anyway, if they are picking at him it will eventually be that way soon, but with shredded cichlids. If you wish to keep something else with him try something placid and fast like rasporas or danios. Although they will also likely disappear
In the past if we had a fish that he didnt like inside the tank he would usually just crush it and that was it.
He has allowed the cichlids for sometime now. I will removed them sometime this weekend hate to do that because I have a 210gallon with just the fahaka in it.
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by bertie 83 »

Maybe the cichlids front him down and he does not like that, whereas other fish might not. Maybe try some dither fish once the cichlids are removed, it will go one way or the other
It's amazing how easy maintenance is. If done regularly and thoroughly
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by RTR »

Tripp: Get and learn to use some good forceps to hold food item for the puffer. Then the food's buoyancy doesn't matter.

HTH
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Tripp »

So cichlids have been removed and he still didnt do much.
So tonight we tube fed him. That perked him up for sure....
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Pufferpunk »

How did that go? What foods did you get into him? Added vitamins?
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!"
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Pufferpunk
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DPs
suvattii
burrfish
T niphobles
Location (country): USA, Greenville, SC
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Re: Fahaka Stopped Up ? or Bloat?

Post by Pufferpunk »

How did that go? What foods did you get into him? Added vitamins?
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!"
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