Dwarf Puffer Breathing Heavy at the Bottom

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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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tristyn
Puffer Fry
Posts: 19
Joined: Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:45 am
Location (country): United States

Dwarf Puffer Breathing Heavy at the Bottom

Post by tristyn »

Hey Y'all :( I went to feed my puffer colony and found one of my girls laying on the bottom pretty listlessly, breathing heavily. She is still brightly colored and visibly looks fine, but isn't very responsive and seems to be gasping. All of my other puffers seem to be doing fine so I can't imagine its the water parameters or anything, but I've tested anyways:

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 2.5ish (between 0 and 5, only 2 days from my water change)

The tank is a 20 gallon SUPER heavily planted with five dwarf puffers (1 male, 4 female) and 3-4 ghost shrimp. It has a mix of life and fake plants. I feed once a day with black worms or pond snails, giving them a fasting day once a week. Water changes happen once a week on Thursday morning and I use Prime as my water conditioner. The tank is well established and has been fully cycled since October. I cycled fishless with ammonia and a bottle of QuickStart. There have been no changes in the tank in the last few months, let alone in the last week.

I have no idea what's going on with this little girl! My only thought is that she may have been picked on and harmed by one of the others, but they've been doing great for the last six months and rarely interact at all, let alone fight. Anyone have thoughts or advice? I don't have another cycled aquarium at the moment since I'm about to move so I'm at a bit of a loss on how I can help her.
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tristyn
Puffer Fry
Posts: 19
Joined: Sun Oct 13, 2013 3:45 am
Location (country): United States

Re: Dwarf Puffer Breathing Heavy at the Bottom

Post by tristyn »

Just as an update, the puffer unfortunately passed away this morning. I'm still not 100% sure of the cause but I'll keep an eye on the rest, who all seem to be doing fine.
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Stratters
Green Spotted Puffer
Posts: 423
Joined: Wed Feb 19, 2014 8:21 pm
Gender: Female
My Puffers: Piggy, a Hairy Puffer
Location (country): Louth, England

Re: Dwarf Puffer Breathing Heavy at the Bottom

Post by Stratters »

I'm so sorry, poor little fellow :(
Never trust big puffers. The fingers you save may be your own. RTR
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