The Puffer Forum

iodine add it to the water as a supplement daily. it will help if it truely is lockjaw

what will iodine do if it's not truely lock jaw? i was under the impression that lock jaw was from feeding him an unvaried diet, or from only feeding him freeze dried crill, or is it just vitamin deficency?

iodine deficiancy is what causees lockjaw in most pufffers, if it isnt lockjaw the iodine is needed anyway as the thyroid gland does use it. same as humans puffers do need iodine for general health and well being.

hi again-
if our puffer has lockjaw and i treat him with iodine how much would you recomend using in the tank? i have him back in his normal 75 gallon now because his tail looks all better, but i do still have the hospital tank (30 gallons) up and running. would you suggest putting iodine in the hospital tank and moving him back in there for treatment or is it okay to simply add iodine as a supplement in the bigger tank. there are inverts in the bigger tank, will iodine benifit them as well, is it reef safe? if you were to use iodine as a supplement rather then as a treatment would you use different doses?
thanks again -clare

mm yes iodine is vital to invert health as well. so dose it into the tank. use the directions on the liquids bottle as that is best, however if no improvement in a couple of days, put porc in hospital and double the dose. you should be using a trace elements supplement for any tank unless you do major weekly water changes and remix salt etc.

Well our poor porc puff doesn't look so good today. we put some iodine in the 75 gl today but when he came out to swim he had almost like little white growths on the side of his mouth. When he swim's he also seems to "cough" allot un related to any piece of food. We'll try more iodine tomorrow I'm a little weary of the hospital tank again, all this back and forth on top of illness. This long slow detereation is very hard to watch. I feel terrible for the poor guy, and that it's been a long time since I've been able to relax and enjoy the hobby.
Thank you as always
Guy

What kind of iodine are you using? Force-feeding m,ay be necessary, if the puffer is starving.

We're using Kent Marine Iodine, His mouth looks bad today, small white growths on one side . He is starving, he wasn't eaten anything substantial in three weeks . Last week he atleast expressed interest in food . He just hides in his cave now, with no interest in food. The growth on his mouth concerns me greatly, he never had anything like that until two days ago. He seems close to dying. It is very hard to watch.
Thank you as always for your time and help
Guy

Terribly sorry to hear that…

Have you considered force-feeding?

Here is a thread on a similar problem:
http://forums.waterwolves.com/index.php ... =84854&hl=
http://forums.waterwolves.com/index.php ... =86012&hl=

Wow Pufferpunk
That's a crazy link! Great story... the amazing thing is I live in Boston near Tuft's, and I had no Idea about the Tuft's Vet clinic for fish . I'm going to call them tomorrow, see what they say. How do you go about force feeding porc puffs, with tubes? He's in his 75 gl hideing, I haven't been able to coax him out of his cave to get a good look at the growth on his jaw today. We're treating the tank with melafix and iodine, doing daily water changes
This site is amazing
thanks again
Guy

You could probably PM the guy that wrote that thread. Pretty lucky that you live right there!

Hello again
It's been a sad day but things were coming to a head. Over the last couple of days we had to make some tough decisions. We tried force feeding our porc but he got so stressed and was weak to begin with it was not working. After talking to a specialist vet at Tuft's medical center we took him in today and had him euthanised, it was very hard. One moment he was in our bucket at the vet, two minutes later we had our bucket with water back but the puffy was gone .
Without really having had time to look back at how things transpired. I can say that if I were to have done something different when we where treating him. I would have resorted to force feeding a little earlier. When he was in his hospital tank recovering from his infection, he was really interested in food just was having trouble getting it into his mouth, I should have tried to force feed then. I think he still would have had a good chance. This week after more than a month without food. It was just sad and he probably could have held on longer, but it wasn't right.
Thanks to everyone who helped out with thier tremendous advice and concern. By the way we chose to have on autopsy done on our porc . We'll have the results in a couple of weeks, I'll post them and hopefully it will help us to better understand what happened to our puffer and how to prevent other people and puffers from having to go through the same thing.
Thanks again
Guy

mm yes done several autopsies on fish, tis the best way to garner info from something that does not add up.

please dont let this keep you from keeping puffers however.

there is another one out there thats eyeing you going take me home