Advice needed

[zodojoco]

I am a first time saltwater tank owner. Have had the tank running for four months with no problems. I have monitored my tank levels to be as advised in the forum. About three weeks ago I got white speckles on one of my puffers (my dog face). I had no clue what it was so researched. Was told to use ich attack by the local fish store. Used it for 4 days as indicated by the store. I had no improvement. I went back as three of my puffer had the spots. They said use rid ich and daily water changes of 25 percent. I am on day four and my dog face (my baby) is gasping at the bottom of the tank with a fleshy looking tail. My box puffer has what looks like wounds around her mouth and her fin tips look ragged. The little guy in my tank scooter has spots but does not look as bad as the other two.
I don't have a second tank to move them to. I don't want to lose Dodge but do not know what else to try. Oh and I did the freshwater dip before starting the rid ich.


I have read this forum till I am blurry eyed. I just have no clue where to go from here. Dodge looks like he is on his last breath and Dotty does not look like she is doing that great either. I do not want to lose any of them but if Dodge goes I want to do everything in my power to save the remaining three.

[Pufferpunk]

The gasping & infections may be caused by using ich meds on your fish. Did you read the SW ich article in our library?

[OraLacerta]

Did you add the meds directly to your display tank? If you have live rock it probably absorbed the meds, which is quite bad as it can be released later into the tank. Never add any meds to the main tank, as many can be absorbed into decor and are very poisonous if you do not dose and monitor levels carefully, which cannot be done with live rock in a tank.

It is always best to treat fish in a hospital tank, especially when adding meds because often times the meds are dangerous, and can kill your beneficial bacteria. Read the SW Ich article in our library, I followed the advice to treat an ich-covered burrfish and he made a full recovery.

It sounds like you have a lot of puffers, and at least one of them (the Dogface) require at least a hundred gallon tank. How big is your tank, was it cycled, and were new additions quarantined? Also, is this 'boxpuffer' a boxfish? If so he could have gotten stressed and 'nuked' the tank, which would poison all of the fish. It may be that the ich outbreak and the wounds are a result of overstocking your tank which will cause disputes and stress which weakens a fish's immune system.

[zodojoco]

I do not have a secondary tank to quarantine them in. This tank was given to me as a gift. Yes the meds were added directly to the tank. I do have live rock and the place where I go the meds said there would be no problems.I have a 55 gallon tank. Yes it was completely cycled before adding my puffers. I have all small puffers. My dogface is about two inches long. My box puffer is about an inch and a quarter and my valentino is the same length the last one looks like the box puffer but has little horns. He is one inch long. I have one fish that is not a puffer its a clown fish for my son. There is also two cleaner fish (a sleeper gobie and some other cleaner that I can not remember the name). He has a fin on his head that he fluffs up and it reminds me of a bearded dragon. The tank also has one crab.
All of the fish were added within a week of each other. No they were not quarantined. They have all been in there since the beginning of April. There have been no conflicts with any of the fish that I can tell. They all hang out together. The clown fish acted aggressive chasing my smallest puffer when we first got him but that only lasted a few days.

Yes I did read the SW article but am unable to treat in a seperate tank as I do not have one.

[Stormylee]

If I were you I'd defiantly do some water changes. If you even do what is recommended on the bottle the meds can burn or kill your puffers.

[crazedpuffer]

You might want to treat by giving him medicine baths. You get an empty bucket (like a cat litter bucket that has been thoroughly cleaned) fill it with tank water and put as much medicine in it as you would for a 10 gallon tank. Put the puff in there for an hour then put him back into your main tank.

[zodojoco]

OK so I emptied out my Christmas decorations from a big rubber tote. I set it up as a quarantine tank. Its not the greatest set up but it is the best I can do for now. His tail is all torn up like the skin got torn back. He is in the new tank (tub). I cleaned my back pack from my main tank and put in new bio balls and put it on the side to filter.
Dodge is in the new tank no longer gasping for air but not moving much. He occasionally races to the top and gives me a heart attack because I think he is going to leap out. I have placed the tub lid as much over the covering as I can the back pack is keeping me from making a secure fit.

I know I need to quarantine all of them but Scooter my cow puffer was picking on Dodge and so am not sure if I should move them all over right now or give Dodge a little time to recoup on his own. I am not even certain he is going to make it. he has not eaten in days and looks like hell. His tail is torn up his fins look ragged and he is not moving around. I can put my hand under him and hold him and he does not struggle. Granted I did pet him before all this happened so maybe he is used to my touch.

My friend just came over and said she is not even sure it is Ich.
She said the clown has dark stuff on his white stripes so she thinks it might be a fungus? but she is really not sure. I tried to take pics but my camera is really not picking up the details. Dodge is slimy to touch compared to how he used to be and he has cloudy eyes (as does the box). Plus the ragged fins and torn up tail. He has specks all over him too. It almost looks like really fine dust particles. Dotty the box has white specks on her fins (they are ragged also on the tips) and she looks dirty, i don't know how else to describe it. She is no longer bright yellow. She is dingy and has puffiness around her lips. I am trying to give as much detail as possible since my camera does not pic it up.

So should I move the others right away?
Do I continue with Rid Ich now that he is in quarantine?
Is there anything I can give him for the wound on his tail, and the ragged fins?


Thank you all for listening and the advice you have given so far. I am hoping for the best he is such a sweet fish. I don't want to lose him.

[OraLacerta]

Ok, first of all, I don't want you to feel like I am jumping down your back; but this is a crisis where it stands right now and I am trying to give you as much input as possible.

I counted two puffer fish and two boxfish in that 55 gallon tank. That is far too small for them all even as juveniles. I wouldn't keep any but the Valentini in there long-term.

Puffers create a lot of waste; they are big-bodied fish and they are very messy eaters. They are also extremely sensitive to bad water quality and many meds because they have no scales. You are already probably running really high nitrates, and now they are being exposed to very toxic chemicals. At the very least you want to keep nitrates under 20 ppm. What are your water parameters (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite)?

Ich looks like white grains of salt on the body of the fish. Ich will often cause cloudy eyes and secondary infections such as fin/tail rot. It is also possible your clownfish, which I assume was wildcaught, introduced Brooklynellosis into the tank which often coincides with ich outbreaks. Wildcaught clownfish are notorious for carrying diseases and absolutely have to be quarantined.

As for the puffer's tail- I would not attribute all of the ragged fins to finrot. Puffers are also aggressive fish, and having that many in such a small tank, along with the other fish will lead to a lot of problems- bites, fin nips, stress, and illness. What I am really worried about is you have two boxfish in this incredibly high-stress environment. Boxfish, when stressed, have a natural defense mechanism which releases their toxins into the water. That's fine in the ocean, but in a closed environment it will kill other fish and probably the boxfish as well. That's what I meant by them possibly 'nuking' your tank.

To address the meds you have added to the tank- the LFS people may have told you that live rock will do 'fine' with the meds they gave you, but unfortunately most fish stores pass around a lot of incorrect information. That is probably partially due to the fact that it is good business for customers to keep coming back to buy more, and if people are misinformed about their livestock that is more likely to happen. Also, many of the employees are paid minimum wage and have very little if any experience with fish. Live rock is very porous and will absorb those meds and it is impossible to maintain therapeutic levels with live rock in the tank. Rid-ich is a combination of two very toxic chemicals- Formalin (formaldehyde) and malachite green. I would only administer it using a dip treatment, not by adding it to your tank.

In order to successfully treat this you will need to leave the display tank fishless for at least a month, and the other fish will need to be quarantined. I would recommend lowering the salinity of the quarantine tanks to 1.008-10, and it would be a good idea to follow up the dips with some antibiotics. The rubbermaid tub is fin as long as you cleaned it thou roughly and haven't used any chemicals on it. I was just using a rubbermaid tub to quarantine a damselfish.

I know the thought of quarantining all of your fish sounds like a costly and time consuming method, but unfortunately things like this will happen in an overstocked tank with all of its inhabitants unquarantined and not researched. I hope your puffers will pull through, but from the rough idea I get of what species you have in there you will need at least a 300 gallon tank to house them full-size. This link may help you get an idea of what species you have and what their full sizes will be:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/boxfishes.htm
Also check out the pufferpedia to ID your true pufferfish species.

[Pufferpunk]

Very good response, Michelle.

[Puffer Queen]

I agree with Michelle.

Do not treat the display tank.

All treatment should be done in a separate quarantine or hospital tank.

Antibiotic baths are better than adding antibiotics to the whole tank.

In the future - everything wet needs to be quarantined - rock, inverts, corals, algae, fish, etc.

[zodojoco]

Thank you all for your help and advice.
Sadly I have lost Dodge.

I have no issue with the time involved in quarantining the fish I just want to be sure I am doing it correctly.

I read my husband the articles and we discussed the Salinity issues. He said that the fish can not survive in the quarantine tank with the Salinity at 1.009. He said Dodge might have survived if I had not moved him. He does not want me to put the other fish in the Quarantine tank until I clarify that issue. He showed me where on the gage the Salinity is supposed to be at and wants to know how the fish are supposed to survive with it so low in the quarantine tank. I do not want to have all the fish die on me. His advice is coming from the lady at the fish store and the fish do not look better after three weeks of treatments so I want to be sure I am ready the treating the Ich issue correctly.

Salinity at 1.009 yes??
Also could it be anything else besides Ich given the stuff on the fish does not look like salt but looks like dirt? Or possibly a combination of Ich and something else. Dotty my box still needs to be nursed back to health and I want to be sure I do it correctly.

Secondary question: If when I set up this tank it needed to be fully cycled before adding fish why will the quarantine tank not kill them since all it has in it is water and salt?? I am sorry if that is a dumb question but my husband says we are missing something and I don't want to put my fish in there and have them all die and then find out I was supposed to do something more to the tank before placing them in there. All of my media is new brand new bio balls on a cleaned backpack (I used boiling water nothing else). Before I place any other fish in there do I need to do anything else? I am second guessing putting Dodge into the quarantine tank.
Thank you in advance!!

[gella81]

Sorry to hear about your puffer.

You do need to put your fish in quarantine and you can to that by placing them in another tank or bucket or whatever you have available (I've used at 33 gallon plastic garbage can before-brand new) with water at the proper salinity and temperature. You should also find a way to aerate the water. Since puffers create a lot of waste and your quarantine tank isn't cycled what you'll need to do is change the water. Probably at least every day. The reason you normally need to let a tank cycle is so that you won't have to do these water changes as often- the good bacteria in your tank will get rid of most of the bad stuff for you, but in a new quarantine you won't have those good bacteria so you will need to take care of the water quality yourself. You will need to get test kits if you don't have them and monitor the water very carefully for ammonia, nitrites and nitrates, and if you see any ammonia or nitrites, do a water change. If nitrates go above 40ppm- do a water change. Ammonia and nitrites need to always be 0 and nitrates should be less than 20ppm. When I had my puffer in quarantine I would make up the water at the proper salinity the day before I needed it and let it come to the right temperature with a heater overnight. Then the next day I would use it in a water change and repeat the process again so I had water for the next day. I hope this helps. Its a very time consuming process and you'll probably need a good amount of salt but its worth it if you can save your fish.

[Pufferpunk]

I think maybe you are confused. You start out the QT at the SG the fish is in. Then, during daily water changes, you slowly lower the SG down to what is recommended in the article. The writer of that article, Kelly Jedlicki (Puffer Queen), IMO, is the #1 formost expert on SW puffers in the world.

[OraLacerta]

I would follow the advice in the article; as PP said, Puffer_Queen is incredibly knowledgeable on saltwater puffers. I followed her advice and treated burrfish fresh from the store with a terrible ich infestation along with internal parasites. Burrfish are rather sensitive fish that don't do well in captivity but he pulled through, so that's just one little bit of evidence that Puffer_Queen knows what she is talking about, not mentioning her years of experience and public lectures. And to repeat what I said, people at Fish Stores should not be trusted for accurate, objective advice (they earn a living off of selling fish and replacing dead ones!), and you should always research on your own, so I am glad you are here!

You want to bring the salinity down slowly to keep from stressing the fish. As for the beneficial bacteria, even if you have enough bacteria to cycle all of the quarantine tanks you will be carrying over whatever pathogens are in the display to the QT tanks, and the bacteria won't survive salinity changes of more than .001-2 a week anyways. To compensate you need to measure the water parameters daily and do large daily (probably 50% or more) waterchanges on the QT tanks. The QT tanks being uncycled will be fine as long as you measure params and change the water religiously- which is impractical to do on large tanks or longterm which is why we emphasize the importance of cycling tanks before adding fish.

While you are doing these water changes, you slowly bring the salinity down. Bringing the salinity down will not kill your fish- if you bring it down slowly and properly mix the water. I had to bring down the salinity to treat my burrfish and on another occasion a damsel and they are both very much alive. You should be much more worried about the stress caused by adding Rid-Ich to your tank rather than the much less extreme measure of lowering the salinity of your QT tanks.

I'd advise you lower the salinity and add a lot of aeration through bubble wands or powerheads to aid their breathing. Then follow the instructions in the article to carry out medicated baths, which also require aeration and constantly watch the fish for signs of stress during the dips should they need to be removed. Administer antibiotics using the bath method as well.

If you could post some pics of the dirt-like specs it would help us ID what it is. Until then I would continue to treat it as advised above.

[OraLacerta]

I should also add that both of the SW fish I treated with hyposalinity around 1.009 were in it in excess of a month and are very much alive! I understand that it seems counter-intuitive to move sick fish out of the recommended range of salinity, but the reason for it is that the ich will not be able to withstand the change in salinity while it is tolerable by even sick fish. Of course long term you want to keep the salinity within that range and keep it steady, but this is a temporary treatment that is MUCH less dangerous than adding chemicals. I know it is a bit nerve-wracking at first, but Puffer_Queen and many other experts recommend using this method.