Inactive and not eating puffer...help!

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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ShermanPuff

Inactive and not eating puffer...help!

Post by ShermanPuff »

Hi,
I have a 60 gallon fresh water tank. To the best of my knowledge my water quality is good. ( I took it to a local shop and had it tested...everything came out normal). I purchased a green spotted puffer at Petsmart (risky..i know) two days ago. It was acting fine at the store, swimming around, came to the glass etc. though its fins were a little ragged due to the numerous other GSP puffers in the same tank. When i got it home, it nibbled at some shrimp but since then it has refused to eat and is uninterested in any sort of food. ( I have tried really small snails, ghost shrimp, frozen shrimp, plankton and blood worms). I tried garlic with no success. I even put the puff in a small breeding net with food thinking it was intimidated by the other fish in my tank (one bala, two rainbow fish, one rainbow shark, three barbs, one catfish, an algae eater and two rope fish). After reading numerous entries on this site and figuring out what to look for, I noticed it had stringy poop hanging off of it. He also is very lethargic and seems to be "sleeping" almost all the time with a darker coloration. The rare few minutes he is not "sleeping" he seems to almost regain full color, but still appears fairly dark.
I read that he should be fine in freshwater until he is a little bit older, (He is about half an inch, maybe smaller) and then added to Brackish water. I am worried the poor guy is starving himself to death, before I run out and spend money on medication I wanted to hear what you guys thought....is this a parasite or something else? If you think it is a parasite what is the best brand/type of medication to get to treat it? ( I read on this site that you should soak the food in the medication for internal parasites...but this guy will not take a bite of any food) Any advice is great....I just want to save my poor puffer...THANKS! :D
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Phaedrus
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Post by Phaedrus »

Sounds like parasites. If you have a hospital tank, you could treat him by himself. I think you can treat with levamisol directly into the water column. See the various sticky threads about parasites etc at the top of the hospital board.
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lisalisa

Post by lisalisa »

Did you read this yet?: http://www.thepufferforum.com/articles/ ... togsp.html

You should really invest in a test kit of your own, it's really worth the money. Your puffer isn't going to fare well in that tank for long, aggression one way or the other, and he will be out competed for food big time. Do you have another 30gal tank to keep him in?
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