The Puffer Forum

I have never seen hith/hlle look like that ever in my life. Hopefully that's all it is though; it's remedied easily with proper diet/supplements. Get some Vitachem.

HITH starts out as a pimple, that's why I thought of that.

Ya it's a good thought, I've just never seen it quite like that pic shows. I'm kind of at a loss to be honest.

Me either, I asked Chewal to check out this thread. He's great at diagnosis & meds.

ok, thanks PP, hopefully this guy will be able to help.

I am picking up vitachem tonight.

I also talked to a guy at my LFS, and he has seen this type of thing before, and he treated it as a bacterial infection, and it went away. so im going to pick up some antibiotics, and try it in his food.


on a more positive note, my new GSP is doing great, he already comes up to the plastic to greet me! I have him in a 15g QT ATM. I'm going to slowly bring his SG to SW level over the next few weeks, so he can go in my 55g SW.

i'll get pics as soon as I can. his markings are quite stunning. its kinda hard to takes pics of him, because there is no lights in the QT, and its a rubber made tub, which is kinda hard to see through lol.

well, I think he is improving, but I am not sure.

I picked up some amoxicilin for fish. the bottle says to dose the water, but the guy at my LFS said he always mixes it into a paste to put in the fishes food. I havent dosed him with it yet. each capsule is 250mg, any idea how much a full grown modestus would need? i'm a little afraid of overdosing or underdosing.

I also found some fish food with levamisol in it! although its only a 0.4% concentration.... better then nothin, twas all I could find in stock.

the bottle of vita-chem they had earlier that day was sold when I got there.... they should have more instock on tuesday....

Tihsho suggested that it may just be a pimple, and that he has seen it on cichlids before. by his instruction, I squirted SW with a syringe onto Flutter's affected areas. hopefully that will help some. he does seem to have percked up a bit.

Those pimples you see in cichlids are HITH disease.

yes i believe that HITH can be caused by a parasite called hexamita, a parasite that can be found in the intestine and when weakened or stressed ,they build up and travel through a fishes system to the sensory pores of the head and somtimes lateral line, thats when the pustules develope. But even if the HITH doesnt kill the fish , Its weakening of the fish can make a fish easly susceptible to life threating bacterial infections.

From what I see in the pics and the way that you describe it it is what they call hole in the head and it is a parasite that show up from poor water conditions and stress the best cure is metro (Hex a Mite) but keep in mind that it really is not very good unless you raise the water temp to at least 90 If you are going to use it I would mix it in his food and hope for the best and also add a mild antibiotic to the water like furan you should start to see an improvement in about 3-4 days Hope this helps

I thought so, but he is one to keep pristine water conditions. Weird...

hmmmm, that is kinda weird....

i've only had him for 6 months, I guess its possible he had HITH from a previous home. he is quite the tough little guy, i'm sure he will pull through if I get the meds soon.

wow, raise the temp to 90 degrees? theres no danger in doing that?

i'll have to look elsewhere for hex-a-mit, because I just realized the place I ordered it froms building burned down, so they arent shipping.

i'll call my LFS and see if they have any meds in stock for HITH.

all I have right now is 250mg amoxicilin tablets, and some fish food that has a little levamisole in it. would any of those things help at this point?

thanks so much CHEWAL: ! you rock!

Hey TFM.

Metronidazole, and di-metronidazole, have been known to work on this. He most probably had a small number of these guys in his intestine(from the lfs and people who had him before you) and somthing stressfull happened wich allowed them to build up.

hope all goes well

hey Rusty,

that actually helps out quite a bit. the anti parasite food I picked up has 1.0% metronidazole, 0.5% praziquantel, and 0.4% levamisole. those amounts are pretty small, but I think anything will help at this point.

now I just gotta figure out how to get the pellets inside him.... i'll try crushing them and hiding it in his normal food.

i'll also look for something that has more metro in it, because I really dont think that 1.0% percent concentration is gonna be enough for him. ill look on the ingredients for something with metronidazole in it. that is the ingredient you mean, when you say metro right CHEWAL:?

should I be looking for something I put in the water, or something I feed him? (for the metro I mean)

i'll look for furan too. to be honest i'm not really sure what furan is, i'll google it lol.

I would say go for feeding as it takes it to the source, and i know for sure that praziquantel doesn't work so well in the water column, but maybe I'm wrong? it sounds like that food is a small anti parasite bomb, all three of those will work on a wide range of parasites. one thing you must be careful of right now is a building up of the parasites resistance to the ,meds, and very importantly a secondary infection. i would do extra water changes( gentle ones) and try to keep the water as clear as possible,and maybe even add some salt or a mild antibacterial.

If you do up the heat i would most definitely add aeration either by pump or by lowering the water level so that it agitates the surface more. as the heat will deoxygenate the water which will stress him and will speed up growth of bacteria in the water, aeration will help with both of these

as for how it happened can you remember anything that might have been stressful to him right before they originally appeared? maybe an extra stressful water change, environment change , or a spike or drop in the water chem, if its HITH i think that could have touched it off?

i hope some of that was helpful, get better flutter!.

Oh no! Not little Flutter....

I haven't had a chance to log in since you wrote this... Poor Flutter! I hope he feels better. I'm sure you'll get to the bottom of this. There are so many knowledgeable people on here helping out, and you take such good care of your fish I think he will pull through.

Hang in there John. :10: