I just bought several new Diodon holocanthus on Wed and didn't notice that one of them had a dropsy-ish looking left eye, which has since gotten worse. I got them from a warehouse dealer and they didn't really let me inspect the fish for disease. Anyway, the poor fellows have been dealing with being in new tanks, so they've swum away from me until recently. On Thurs a friend pointed out that this fish's left eye was bigger than the right, and at first it looked like it was a case of dropsy. A few hours later it began to cloud up. That ain't dropsy! I'm not familiar w/ cloudy eye, and I took some pictures up close so you guys can take a better look. The cornea of the eye has a thin film on it, but in the eye, right above the pupil (I'm guessing) there are small white tendrils that appear to drape from the top of the eye over the pupil. They look like they even might be parasites, like a copepod or something. But the eye looks undamaged, though enlarged, and the skin around it is swollen too. No redness. I got ahold of my dealer and he told me to give it FW dips, 5-7 min 1x a day for 2 days. This is the second day and I'm not sure there's any improvement, but I'll keep doing it b/c it's worked for ick before. In addition to this, I also moved the poor puffer to a quaratine tank (which has cycled SW) and added Maracyn-Two (erythromycin). Today I put in some CopperSafe to get off any inverts. I do a 80% partial water change daily b/c the Maracyn causes the water to get really yellow and it doesn't smell right, but I do treat the new water w/ meds. I lowered the salinity to 20 ppt instead of 25-30, and the temp is ~27 C. I warmed it up a bit b/c he looked uncomfortable and I tend to keep my puffers on the cool side. His eye infection isn't from my water, he came in with it. Does anyone have a clue to what it is and how to treat it? And I can't figure out how to get the picts on here
SW system: It's a 500 gallon flow-through system w/ bioballs and crushed coral. It's been cycled for more than a year, thanks to previous inhabitants and my 2 starter puffers. Each fish gets their own separate tank but share the water b/c of the flow-through.
Water parameters in short, of flow-through system: pH 8.1, alkalinity 3.5 meq/L, nitrites 0.1 mg/L (due to addition of several fish in a system recently maintained by 2 puffers), nitrates 50 mg/L (which has been lower/higher a lot for a long time, but the older puffers are doing well), 0 free and total ammonia. I use SeaChem Marine Basic, so the tests and units are probably different than most people use.
QT tank: same water parameters as above except it's 20 ppt and 30 C.
