The Puffer Forum

Sounds neurological. Thiamin deficiency due to thiaminase is one possible explanation. Depends on the food and of course vitamin additions.

For the freezer: Putting a fish in a bowl with warm water into the freezer is cruel, can take hours. If you wish to use a freezer do it this way: Put saltwater with high salinity (higher than marine, add some salt) in a bowl (without fish) in the freezer. Wait until the water has <-5°C, but is still not frozen. Add the fish to the bowl, most tropical fish are unconcious at once/very quickly due to shock and die apparently painless.

Alternatively smash the head with an axe (not much you can do wrong here).

Overdosing with clove oil is also said to be quite painless.

The AMVA recommends against freezing, even after shocking.

Well, I don't care about AMVA, just about facts As a sidenote, the German DRTA recommends this. So, there seems to be no consensus among the pros.

Addition: The AMVA does not consider the method I described above (also found at the DRTA) in the AVMA guidelines on
euthanasia (formerly report of the AVMA panel on euthanasia). It considers only minimum temperatures of 4°C. This is abviously too high, I recommend at least -5°C. The shock knocks tropical fishes out at once or at least very quickly.

Corvus I agree with your method of freezing. This doesn't take hours like putting him it in a bag and then in the freezer would. Submersing it in near freezing water is a shock to the entire fish and they become unconscious within seconds.

OK.

Always keep Clove Oil on hand! There are many 24 hour drug stores you can get it at.

Corvus wrote:Sounds neurological. Thiamin deficiency due to thiaminase is one possible explanation. Depends on the food and of course vitamin additions.

I also thought neurological as well which is why I asked about the skimmer. There was a lady who forgot to turn on the skimmer after a period of time (about a week) and wiped out a tank mysteriously.... lack of O2. She didn't realize that the skimmer was off until she did the emergency water change because the fish started to drop one by one over the course of a couple days.

Pufferpunk wrote:Always keep Clove Oil on hand! There are many 24 hour drug stores you can get it at.

We learned that the hard way. Had to euth a discus and I didn't have enough MS-222 so we had to do a late night run to Shoppers.

J-P wrote:

Corvus wrote:Sounds neurological. Thiamin deficiency due to thiaminase is one possible explanation. Depends on the food and of course vitamin additions.

I also thought neurological as well which is why I asked about the skimmer. There was a lady who forgot to turn on the skimmer after a period of time (about a week) and wiped out a tank mysteriously.... lack of O2. She didn't realize that the skimmer was off until she did the emergency water change because the fish started to drop one by one over the course of a couple days.

Lack of O2 is another option. The lady you mention must have very little surface agitation in her tank. A marine tank with sufficient surface agitation does not need a skimmer for additional oxygen input. In fact I have 6 reef tanks around here without skimmers, since growth of macro algae, soft corals, DSBs and water changes export enough material. All have strong surface agitation. I also sometimes forget to turn on the skimmers on other tank for days without any results of discomfort of vertebrates and inverts. But these tanks also have no visible problem with an 8 hour blackout. Some corals closed until power was on again, but that's it. That means I might not have much oxygen consumption at all in these specific setups.

You could always use a fishing preist if you could hit your puffer hard in the head. Probley not the nicest way to end it but i hear trout die instantly. The vid is sad, such a lovly fish.