The Puffer Forum

RTR wrote:I cannot see the mouth well enough from the picture, how are the incisors? That is a much softer diet than I use for these fish.

He was getting a diet of 90% snails until the planaria outbreak decimated my snail population, so he recently has been getting 25-50% snails and the rest is the aforementioned foods. His incisors are getting a bit larger then I'd like, and I'm considering trimming them soon due to the lack of snails. I don't observe any problems feeding though, so I don't believe the teeth are so much of a problem yet that they're preventing proper nutrition.

Edit: My jungle tabs have come in today, so I plan on medicating with those ASAP. Anyone who has used them have suggestions on how to dose food with them?

Edit Edit: Just curious, but how many tablespoons of sea salt do you guys/gals with f8's put in per gallon to make the salinity correct. I've had a hydrometer problem in the past, now that I have a refroctometer it tells me that about 1.5 tablespoons per gallon will give 1.004-1.005. It was closer to 1 tablespoon per gallon with the stupid hydrometer.

G S P Freak wrote:

RTR wrote:I cannot see the mouth well enough from the picture, how are the incisors? That is a much softer diet than I use for these fish.

He was getting a diet of 90% snails until the planaria outbreak decimated my snail population, so he recently has been getting 25-50% snails and the rest is the aforementioned foods. His incisors are getting a bit larger then I'd like, and I'm considering trimming them soon due to the lack of snails. I don't observe any problems feeding though, so I don't believe the teeth are so much of a problem yet that they're preventing proper nutrition.

I didn't know planaria can wipe out a snail population. Did they kill the snails? Eat the eggs? Where they ramshorns? Just curious to know since I have a snail tank.

Mostly, they ate the eggs, I also had a few casualties, but it's uncertain if the planaria were directly related to the deaths. I had a mix of ramshorns and pond snails. The population has just slowly died off from lack of being able to produce more progeny =/. Atm, I'm combating the planaria menace and have managed to remove most of them, but the snails still haven't started to recover yet. Mind you this is a small tank, only about 5 gallons or so.

G S P Freak wrote:Mostly, they ate the eggs, I also had a few casualties, but it's uncertain if the planaria were directly related to the deaths. I had a mix of ramshorns and pond snails. The population has just slowly died off from lack of being able to produce more progeny =/. Atm, I'm combating the planaria menace and have managed to remove most of them, but the snails still haven't started to recover yet. Mind you this is a small tank, only about 5 gallons or so.

Learn something new every day. I didn't know they would eat the eggs. I imagine planaria would be hard to combat in a snail tank.

G S P Freak wrote:

RTR wrote:I cannot see the mouth well enough from the picture, how are the incisors? That is a much softer diet than I use for these fish.

He was getting a diet of 90% snails until the planaria outbreak decimated my snail population, so he recently has been getting 25-50% snails and the rest is the aforementioned foods. His incisors are getting a bit larger then I'd like, and I'm considering trimming them soon due to the lack of snails. I don't observe any problems feeding though, so I don't believe the teeth are so much of a problem yet that they're preventing proper nutrition.

Edit: My jungle tabs have come in today, so I plan on medicating with those ASAP. Anyone who has used them have suggestions on how to dose food with them?

Edit Edit: Just curious, but how many tablespoons of sea salt do you guys/gals with f8's put in per gallon to make the salinity correct. I've had a hydrometer problem in the past, now that I have a refroctometer it tells me that about 1.5 tablespoons per gallon will give 1.004-1.005. It was closer to 1 tablespoon per gallon with the stupid hydrometer.

For me when using the fizzy tabs I break a tab apart with the back of a knife or other blunt object, grab 2-3 medium pieces comparable to the original size of the tab and than soak for minimum 2-3 hours(longer is better I found 4-6 hours to be about the optimum) then continue for a week and a half. After I test to see if the ip is gone by feeding a good sized meal and comparing how long it takes for the puff to become skinny again (should take about a day and half a day roughly to get skinny again)

I have heard that planaria business before on-line, but I don't remember where. Most planaria are harmless, but obviously not all. As snail breeder tanks always have egg plates around, any egg-eating planaria would have a field day and would be strongly selected for quite quickly. As I use snails to help hold nitrification bacteria in temporarily fishless tanks, I have been watching for such but so far have not had it hit my tanks.

Yes the little buggers are enjoying snail caviar and are quite resilient to my efforts to get rid of them, so I'm going to restart the snail colony by first separating the snails, ordering more to replenish the population, and sterilizing the entire tank before reestablishing it. As for my puffer, he seems to be showing slight improvement, his belly returns to flat slower, and he looks a bit better overall, but is still far from being how I want him. Hopefully my routine of treatment/fattening up will return him to his former glory in no time, I will have an update on his status as soon as the treatment is complete.

G S P Freak wrote:Yes the little buggers are enjoying snail caviar and are quite resilient to my efforts to get rid of them, so I'm going to restart the snail colony by first separating the snails, ordering more to replenish the population, and sterilizing the entire tank before reestablishing it. As for my puffer, he seems to be showing slight improvement, his belly returns to flat slower, and he looks a bit better overall, but is still far from being how I want him. Hopefully my routine of treatment/fattening up will return him to his former glory in no time, I will have an update on his status as soon as the treatment is complete.

Is this possible-

They are not planaria..but are a parasite..that through feeding snails to the puffer caused the puffer to contract an internal parasite.

I know fish can eat planaria pretty safely....but what if what you have is not planaria?

A fish parasite would be on or in a fish. A fish parasite would not, could not, survive in a snail-only tank. There is no such problem.

HTH

RTR wrote:A fish parasite would be on or in a fish. A fish parasite would not, could not, survive in a snail-only tank. There is no such problem.

HTH

Ok..I was just wondering.

+1 to RTR, and besides that I've positively identified them as planarian. I've actually worked with the same species of planarian in the lab, that are now in my tanks.

Well I treated him numerous times in the last few weeks for IPs and he seems to be better as far as stomach issues are concerned. I've been feeding daily to fatten him up. He acts normal, has a healthy appetite, but still has grayish speckling on his stomach and a grey ring around his mouth. I haven't tested water parameters recently, but I'm doing a water change tomorrow and will test params a day or two after that. Hope that he returns to his former bright self with a snow-white belly soon, or I'm at loss as to what's bothering the poor fellow :/.

Well, I've treated for IPs and water parameters are fine, so I honestly am at loss, for the time being I guess I will just wait and see if he gets over it. I plan to trim his teeth down soon though (pufferpunks guide+YouTube videos have helped prepare me), but I'm having trouble locating finquel, or at least finding it at a decent price. Anyone know where I can get finquel? I'll use clove oil if I have to, but I'd rather not.

Try Ebay or Amazon.

Pufferpunk wrote:Try Ebay or Amazon.

Found some on eBay but its 25 bucks for 10g, yikes! Seeing as I can't find it cheaper elsewhere, guess I don't have much choice. Do you have any advice on administration of the finquel? I have small scales that can measure in mg, but I've no clue on how much to dose per liter, and googling gave me around 70-80mg/l dosing for tropical fish.