The Puffer Forum

burgundy/red poop?!? crazy... my GSP has been eating bloodworms(only as part of his diet though) for about a year and a half and he has guinea pig poop(size,shape and color(brown)lol)

Just wanted to throw out there that the times I've seen my GSP "bent" sideways, it was just prior to a poop. It's possible that your puffer may be constipated. There are some good posts about puffer constipation; just search the Forum with terms like "constipation" and "epsom salt" (the latter being a common treatment for fish that need some help in that area.)

This was a real helpful thread -

Unfortunately it didn't save one of my two Wal-Mart GSP with internal parasites and the sunken-belly : big head look. The other Wal-Mart GSP did recover and is nice and plump and doing fine so I thank everyone who contributed to this thread.

My puffers always bend when they are checking something out or unsure of something. The way the GSP is bent in the picture is not abnormal at all. But cycling with a Puffer is not a good thing at all. Daily WCs are needed and def. an IP treatment is a must. It looks to me he has IPs without a doubt. I would look for the stringy poop to confirm.

borgey wrote:My puffers always bend when they are checking something out or unsure of something. The way the GSP is bent in the picture is not abnormal at all. But cycling with a Puffer is not a good thing at all. Daily WCs are needed and def. an IP treatment is a must. It looks to me he has IPs without a doubt. I would look for the stringy poop to confirm.

This is an old thread so it does not much matter now, but in case a newbie reads this..

The bend or crooked look in this case was abnormal and was due to emaciation, either through starvation or starvation as a complication of IPs