Hi everyone,
3 days ago I FINALLY got my first fish.. two dwarf puffers. I have them in a heavily planted 10 gallon tank. I bought them from my LFS (owned by my friend actually) and I had done a ton of research and knew that wild caught ones were very prone to IPs. However, it didn't occur to me until the second day that they were definitely on the skinny side.. not sure if I would say sunken belly (maybe the smaller one has it). The female larger one is pretty active, good coloration, a little skinny, but eating a decent amount for sure (snails and frozen bloodworms). The smaller male was stressed at first but getting better now, but skinny, and I've seen him eat a few times. Yesterday I starting finding a few short, white/beige looking things (sometimes in a shape of a worm) that I am assuming to be their poop. If they are eating and acting ok-ish, but their poop is white and stringy then what kind of IPs do you think they have? Yesterday I did a 40% water change and then dosed prazipro and I will be dipping their bloodworms in prazipro every day for a week and see if things get better at all. Should I buy any other medicines?
Any help is appreciated, very worried about them.
Dwarf Puffer IPs?
Forum rules
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.
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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Dianamarie7
- Puffer Fry
- Posts: 5
- Joined: Wed Jul 08, 2020 10:20 pm
- Location (country): United States
Re: Dwarf Puffer IPs?
Hi there I have 4 pea puffer and feed them live black worms frozen blood worms and snails. I use chemo pure vite chem to the food in. I have had mine for over two years now and there doing great. Now the white stringy thing is it poop? or is it the blood worms. I know when I feed blood worms they some times will eat the meat out of the skin and I'll find the skin around the tank. I never treated mine for parasites. So I don't know anything about that sorry. I also know that I did have a problem with one of the bigger pea puffers bullying the little pea Puffer. he wasn't getting food so I took tongs and would personally feed him and make sure he ate.n so now he seems to be able to fight with the gang to get his fair share of food. But I really do think that live black worms is the best food. It also makes them run around the tank and hunt for the food. Maybe I was just lucky but that's what I did to keep mine alive for as long as I have. Good luck they're awesome little guys there so much fun I hope you figure out what's going on with then.