The Puffer Forum

Well, the female seems to be better, although some days shes a bit thin. But the male is thining out a lot more between meals. I'm still treating them, now with metro and prazi. They still have huge apetites and don't seem bothered at all by the taste of the meds.
I'm lost as to what else to do.

Much more likely. Wild-caught fish do have intestinal parasites from time to time, but generally not to the point of causing harm. It's usually farmed fish, where the populations are much denser that fish (or any other animal) can become truly weighted down with parasites. In the wild, the odds are so stacked against transmission between individuals that parasites have to produce gigantic numbers of offspring merely to survive.

Cheers, Neale

Nick wrote:If heavily feeding the puffers cures the problem with sunken bellies, perhaps IP's was a wrong diagnosis and they were simply starved and needed a lot of time to fatten up?

Well, I just found the male dead.
I had stopped treating a few weeks ago after trying to treat with jungle lab parasite guard, metro and gel-tek for a while.
He didn't seem bothered by the IPs, always had a huge apetite. I kept him well fed and everyday he looked like he hadn't eaten in weeks, so I figured he wasn't going to be able to hold on forever.
The female is doing fine.

I would suggest Flubenol-15, it's available internationally and fixed my GSP after he refused to eat the jugle labs food and was treated unsucessfully with geltek soaked food. The female definately has IP's if the male did, no matter how well she looks. PS - thanks Neale, thats kind of what I thought.

She did have it before but has kept a full belly for probably around a month now. I'll keep my eye on her though.
I'll look into Flubenol-15 next time the need arises, thanks.