The Puffer Forum

Thanks PQ. I'm glad his 'bulldozing' is because of the tank bottom.

I'm going to lower the tank temperature then. Will the 1.009 SG by itself be effective in preventing another outbreak? I am planning on keeping him in the tank another 4-5 weeks. Should I do another dip? I still see a few spots left on him that seem to be unnaffected by the lowered salinity as of yet.

As for the worms- yikes, that poor fish! I am noticing at least some results with his current treatment, but if he starts showing signs of parasites again I will treat with Prazi or a similar med.

Thank you again; I'm so thankful for your adivce!

The spots themselves are treatment-proof, you just have to wait for them to decide to fall off and become free swimming at their own pace, once they're off the fish, they'll pop like balloons from the water rushing through their membranes to balance out the salt content.

I know what I am about to post is not a recommended course of action, and I am not recommending that you do what I do, however I thought I would share what I do to provide you with alternatives.

When I set up my 75g reef a Butterfly fish brought ich into our system. This was the first time I had to deal with it, and I stressed out! The ich affected the butterfly, yellow tang, and the Valentini puffer that I still have.

In Australia, we don't have the medications that are commonly mentioned on this site, and other international sites. We basically just have Melafix or Copper solutions, or other less trustworthy medications that are generally frowned upon.

What I did was put all the fish in a QT tank, just as you have, but I treated them with Cupamine- a copper medication. I did this for two weeks, carefully monitoring the correct level of copper. I've read that copper can blind or kill puffers, but I really had no other alternative.

Copper treatment worked well for me in this instance and all the fish survived. I still have the yellow tang and puffer, and they have no side effects from what I can observe.

A few months later I bought a Blue tang, a fish that I knew were prone to ich. He was really small, and quite flighty in the tank. After a few days he was speckled with ich. However, the tank was now all set up and he was impossible to catch. We decided that unless the other fish started to have ich as well, then we would leave him and try to just keep him strong and healthy.

This was about 6 months ago, and the tang was moved to my 135g tank and he is still alive and healthy. Occaisonally he does still show signs of ich- sometimes he gets the white spots, but they go away. Evidently, I have ich in my system. However, I believe that if the fish are kept healthy then letting them deal with it themselves is less stressful for them than bathing them in freshwater, or dosing them with medications.

So I guess in this post I was trying to say that Copper treatments have worked for me, but so has letting nature take its course. Of course, it would depend on the severity of the ich.

P.S Your burrfish is so cute!

Bonnie,

I am a big "fan" of copper - especially Seachem cupramine as it is well tolerated by even sensitive fish and sharks.

Michelle,

The parasites that are on the fish are often well protected by using the fish's own slime coat, skin as protection.

Treatment is aimed at killing the free swimming ones.

Best of luck.

Wow! What an interesting thread to read.....OraLacerta, I wish you the best of luck in getting totally rid of this pest, he is a great looking puffer.

Bonnie3188, I too, have had luck with simple clean water, and stress coat for treating ICK, and do believe that alot of fish can fight it off themselves. I actually found this out by accident the first time a fish got ICK and had NO clue what to do, which led to loads of research. None of my fish have had any problems since then, except those darn clown loaches. The weird thing is is that it only seems to be one tank. The last batch I had were fine until I put them in my 65 gallon, and then they came down with a horrible case of ICK that nothing worked on and I lost them. I don't know what it is about that tank, it has never had ICK until this batch of loaches, and other fish do fine, just can't keep clown loaches.

The problem is that once the parasite is in the tank - it stays in the tank. Some fish can develop a limited immunity but if a stressor occurs (new fish, fluctuating water parameters, fighting, etc), they will not be able to "fight off" the parasite.

Dr Stoskopf (fish vet) relates that fish living with parasites is comparable to a human or dog living in a house infested with fleas - constant stress.

Chronic stress weakens immune systems and shortens life spans.

Thanks PQ, and everyone else keeping up with the thread.

The puff continues to do well. He is feeding heartily, exploring, begging, and most importantly looking much healthier than he did a week ago. He still is not accepting any other food but prawns, so I'm trying to get him weaned off of them because he's very wasteful with them; they're too small and hard to shell (he's pretty good at shelling them but he misses a lot of meat in the process). If only he'd accept the larger shrimp I purchased at the grocery store!

Have you tried scallops or squid - especially the head with tentacles?

I've been trying mussels from the grocery store, along with large-chunked squid. Not with tenticles though, the grocery store did have some fresh squid with tentacles. I do think that would interest him; he seems to like the prawns because the current in the tank tosses them around and makes them look live. Little tentacles may entice him!
I'll pick some of that up today when I go shopping. I'll post the results probably later today.

What about mysis shrimp? I know it shouldnt be his main diet, but if it added variation to his diet it couldn't be a bad thing! All my puffers love mysis shrimp!

He won't eat anything but his prawns; I've tried all of my frozen foods and then some squid tenticles & a cockle... Looks like he's going to have to be very hungry before he eats something else.

My puffer's pudge continues to grow, along with his appetite. He still needs to put on a few 'pounds' to look healthy, but he's well on his way. All but one or two spots of ich are gone, which is very nice to see. His suspicious bite-like mark on his tail is healing up, so it must have been a nip from shipping. Things are continuing to go well for Mr. Burrfish, maybe I should start thinking of a name?

I really am liking the idea 'Sputnik'.

Ok, finally an update.

He's continued to improve and it's hard to believe I've had him for almost three weeks now. He's completely ich-free, and has become incredibly 'tame' in these past few weeks. He greets both my husband and I when we enter the room, and he loves it when we bring our birds over to his tank to watch him.

The little turd is still being picky, though. He just (three days ago) began accepting cockles but only after I removed the meat from the shells. I have completely weaned him off of prawns and onto cockles hoping he will begin to accept other foods.

I'm thinking part of the reason for his pickiness is the fact his teeth are really worn down. I need some puffer owners with larger puffs (full-sized GSPs and the like) to tell me if this is typical. His teeth do not come to a point, they are worn flat on the top and bottom sets. However my Figure EIghts have always had sharp points that form a 'V' shape.

Could he have worn those teeth down too far? He seems to avoid any foods that are chewy like squid or foods with hard shells like cockles.

These puffers are in the diodontidae family (2 fused jaw plates). Dogface puffers, stars and stripes, reticulated, etc are in the tetraodontidae family (4 fused plates forms beak).

Burrfish do not suffer from overgrown teeth. I would not worry about his teeth - looking back at the pictures you posted - his teeth look normal.

Great to hear that he's doing well. Like Puffer Queen said, the teeth of burrfish and porcupine puffers are fused into plates. They are naturally flat, and are often nearly covered by the "lips". I agree that I wouldn't worry too much about overgrown teeth, unless they get quite long.
Your burrfish's refusal to eat shelled food, reminds me of my porc. I started out feeding him things that wouldn't sink, like mussel out of the shell and mysis shrimp. He would pick them off right as they left my hand. When I first tried to feed him shelled mussel or clam, he followed it to the bottom, then came back to the surface and resumed begging. I don't think he knew it was supposed to be food. Eventually, I dropped in a clam with the shell open and then turned off the light. When I came back a couple of hours later, he had eaten the clam and dragged the shell to the other side of the tank. He now viciously attacks anything shelled that I put in the tank. It's possible that letting your burrfish hunt for the food with the lights off might work too. Of course it could also be possible that you just have a picky eater.