I would have put this in the hospital section, had it not been too late.
I've kept 3 female Carinotetraodon species together without any problems whatsoever since I've had them, around 7 or 8 months I'd guess. They squabble at feeding time, but that has been it.
However, i recently lost my female salivator and am fighting a losing battle to save my female borneensis.
The problem is thus. They are all fed the same amounts. The diets are varied. Cockle, mussel, bloodworm. All the puffers ate very similar amounts, however, the irrubesco is the only one to stay a reasonable size. The other 2, even feeding them 3 times a day, have continued to lose weight.
I initially came to the conclusion it must be IP's, but that's impossible. No new fish have been added to the tank in months, and it has a UV filter on it was well, eradicating the bad bugs.
But the Salivator and Borneensis refuse to put on weight, even after feeding them 3+ times a day.
has anyone had a similar experience? like i say, my Irrubesco is fine, as is the Male salivator on the other side of a divider.
Disheartened!
Mystery illness affecting my Carinotetraodon puffers
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.
-
Nick
- Former Staff Member
- Posts: 3231
- Joined: Sun Oct 22, 2006 8:47 pm
- My Puffers: Mine:
GSPs - Shakespeare and Jillybean
F8 - Velvet
My fiance:
DP - Emma Goldman
Narrow Lined Puffer - Ulrike - Location (country): Northeastern USA
- Location: Middletown, CT
- Contact:
Ip's can take months or even close to a year to multiply enough to start starving a fish. They could have come with a very light infection, then it slowly, steadily built up. The UV sterilizer will prevent them from spreading to other fish for the most part, and slow down exceedingly the rate at which they spread inside the infected fish, but is not a failsafe against them muliplying internally. I would treat the tank with Flubenol-15, which is puffer safe and is the only med that I know of which works even when added to the water.
No matter how magnificent your successes or devastating your failures, the worlds' approximately 5 billion impoverished people could not possibly care less.
-
PuffTheMagicFishy
- Figure 8 Puffer
- Posts: 166
- Joined: Sat Jul 22, 2006 12:51 am
- My Puffers: None at the mo.
- Location (country): California, USA
- Location: California
In the meantime, try multiple meals daily and fatty foods like Mysis shrimp to keep their strength up. I found that freeze-dried plankton (the mini shrimps) were perfect for soaking up meds and feeding to my irrubesco when I was treating her IPs. Good luck with your girls!
Tanks:
20-gal feeder breeder (platties and snails)
75-gal West African Lungfish + snails
Other pets: Pacific parrotlet, Italian Greyhound, lots of plants
20-gal feeder breeder (platties and snails)
75-gal West African Lungfish + snails
Other pets: Pacific parrotlet, Italian Greyhound, lots of plants
-
Nick
- Former Staff Member
- Posts: 3231
- Joined: Sun Oct 22, 2006 8:47 pm
- My Puffers: Mine:
GSPs - Shakespeare and Jillybean
F8 - Velvet
My fiance:
DP - Emma Goldman
Narrow Lined Puffer - Ulrike - Location (country): Northeastern USA
- Location: Middletown, CT
- Contact:
I've actually found overfeeding speeds the course of the parasites, it will keep the puffers fat but the parasites will multiply so much that they will kill the puffer outright, a GSP I had, Kiwi, died of this, he was such a glutton I never even suspected parasites until he died surrounded by a mass of stringy poo. I would feed about what is normal for the fish, but in small portions more frequently, as the more food is in the gut at once, the higher the proportion the parasites are getting vs the fish; puffer bellies can hold several times more food than a puffer can digest.
No matter how magnificent your successes or devastating your failures, the worlds' approximately 5 billion impoverished people could not possibly care less.
-
PuffTheMagicFishy
- Figure 8 Puffer
- Posts: 166
- Joined: Sat Jul 22, 2006 12:51 am
- My Puffers: None at the mo.
- Location (country): California, USA
- Location: California
Some call it a product of a mis-spent youth, I call it Rock n Roll ! 
-
Corvus
- Mentor
- Posts: 1405
- Joined: Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:35 am
- Gender: Male
- Location: Planet earth; mostly Germany recently
Yes, protozoans/bacteria can be easily transferred. However, I think the symptoms sound more like IPs like nematodes or similar. I'd soak the food with the med against worms. It's the most direct way to provide a high concentration inside the puffer.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks.
I wouldnt bother with medicating food as its not that effective and there is no good med to do this with in the Uk, as Corvus says, it does sound like IP
As Rocker suggests and use some flubenol 15 from http://www.flubenol.co.uk that should sort it out ok, also if you add the code 51fluby, you will get a 10% discount
As Rocker suggests and use some flubenol 15 from http://www.flubenol.co.uk that should sort it out ok, also if you add the code 51fluby, you will get a 10% discount
-
kimmers318
- Dwarf Puffer
- Posts: 98
- Joined: Sun Aug 20, 2006 9:09 am
- Location: Ne Ohio
Out of curiousity, even though I have never seen flubenol here in the US and "knock on wood" haven't dealt with IP in my puffers, how do you figure the dosage of medication to add to water for soaking foods in? If you are using a medication that for instance says add 1 tsp per 10 gal water to the tank for 10 days or whatever, how much would you add to the water itself? I totally understand the soaking the food because the medication would get inside the puffer so much more effectively, but I would be afraid of too much or too little.
-
Corvus
- Mentor
- Posts: 1405
- Joined: Mon Dec 04, 2006 10:35 am
- Gender: Male
- Location: Planet earth; mostly Germany recently
Flubenol is already diluted. It has 5% Flubendazole, which is the most important ingredient. This stuff prohibits many worms from eating. If you know the weight of your puffer, you can calculate and measure the dose needed, since for Flubendazole the daily doses are known (ca. 5 mg/kg weight = 5 ppm Flubendazole = approx. 100 ml Flubenol/kg). For a 100 g puffer you need about 10 ml, 10 g puffer needs 1 ml...). Because it is not easy to overdose and you probably won't get all of the fluid into the food and in the puffer, I'd use more.
If you put it into the water, you cannot be sure how fast it is destroyed by light/chemical reactions and after adding it for several days you'll have no idea how much actually is in the water. But as said, it is hard to overdose, so adding to the water is not bad either.
EDIT: Just saw Paul's link goes to Flubenol 15, which has 15 % Flubendazole. You'd need to calculate accordingly.
If you put it into the water, you cannot be sure how fast it is destroyed by light/chemical reactions and after adding it for several days you'll have no idea how much actually is in the water. But as said, it is hard to overdose, so adding to the water is not bad either.
EDIT: Just saw Paul's link goes to Flubenol 15, which has 15 % Flubendazole. You'd need to calculate accordingly.
Last edited by Corvus on Fri Apr 27, 2007 10:51 am, edited 2 times in total.
Thanks why I think adding meds to food is a bad idea, in a community tank its often the sick ones that dont get the food, its very hit or misskimmers318 wrote:Out of curiousity, even though I have never seen flubenol here in the US and "knock on wood" haven't dealt with IP in my puffers, how do you figure the dosage of medication to add to water for soaking foods in? If you are using a medication that for instance says add 1 tsp per 10 gal water to the tank for 10 days or whatever, how much would you add to the water itself? I totally understand the soaking the food because the medication would get inside the puffer so much more effectively, but I would be afraid of too much or too little.
Flubendazole at 5% is not strong enough to kill all parasites and they can build up a resistance to it. Also its not water soluble, so adding normal flubenol 5 to the water wont actually do a great deal... to make it water soluble you need to use acetone or DMSO, neither of which are exactly safe for fish use....Corvus wrote:Flubenol is already diluted. It has 5% Flubendazole, which is the most important ingredient. This stuff prohibits many worms from eating. If you know the weight of your puffer, you can calculate and measure the dose needed, since for Flubendazole the daily doses are known (ca. 5 mg/kg weight = 5 ppm Flubendazole = approx. 100 ml Flubenol/kg). For a 100 g puffer you need about 10 ml, 10 g puffer needs 1 ml...). Because it is not easy to overdose and you probably won't get all of the fluid into the food and in the puffer, I'd use more.
If you put it into the water, you cannot be sure how fast it is detroyed by light/chemical reactions and after adding it for several days you'll have no idea how much actually is in the water. But as said, it is hard to overdose, so adding to the water is not bad either.
Last edited by Paul Fox on Fri Apr 27, 2007 8:24 am, edited 1 time in total.