GSP is still sick, fighting an uphill battle here.

[Pufferpunk]

Soak the snails in the meds. Did you add garlic?

Stop the Melafix for now.

[LongGrain]

yea, i've tried both meds and garlic, garlic by itself, and meds by itself and he doesn't seem to like any of it.

[Pufferpunk]

With snails?

[LongGrain]

no, with snails I just did the meds, he ate them, just wasn't very excited about it, I only did that once because I don't have enough snails to be feeding him 3-4 snails every day. I'm down to 3 adults right now and zero babies until some of the eggs hatch.

[Pufferpunk]

You're gonna have to get more snails for him. Go to every pet shop you can find. Petsmart/Petco usually has hundreds. Just save them for him. He's gonna die if you don't get this treated within the next few days.

[LongGrain]

i know! I'm doing the best I can, I've been treating all of the food I've been giving him for over a week now.

[Pufferpunk]

I know you're trying.

[Pufferpunk]

Mod note: Several posts were removed between the previous post and this one; if the discussion seems a bit disjointed or contains references to something that doesn't make sense, we apologize.
--LGP

-------------------------------------------

I'd discontinue all meds for now & treat those IPs. I definitely would never use any meds at 1/2 dose, because the pathogens will become immune to it. IMO, the puffer's immune system is compromised by what the IPs are doing to it. It's body is breaking down. Fix the IPs & the puffer can repair it's own fins.

[LongGrain]

well alright well right now I'm dissolving a small piece of a jungle tablet in some tank water, I'm going to take my smallest snail (too big for him to eat by himself) which should be enough to fill him up, crush it and let it soak in the meds for an hour, then feed it to him. Thats the best I can do right now. I've never seen that maracyn stuff at any of the local pet places when I've looked. And with opinions on it being a little conflicted, I'm not so sure I want to take the chance. I know this guy already has a low chance of survival, thats why I came to you to begin with. i've been fighting with his health since the day I brought him home.

[LongGrain]

well he is currently voraciously tearing apart the medicated, crushed snail I just gave him.

[Pufferpunk]

YIPPEE!!! Maybe now he has a chance.

[LongGrain]

The Maracyn is utter BS for this problem and will contribute to this fishes demise. So far through out the thread there has only been mention of ICH at the onset as the reason for adding Melafix, never has a fungal infection been mentioned. Maracyn is a broad spectrum antibiotic that is used to treat gram positive bacteria on the surface of an organism and has little to no systemic uptake. In other words if you do this you are treating the skin, the fish absorbs too little (even at full strength) to do any good with IP's. I feel it will only cause stress and, even though it's targeted at gram positive bacteria, possibly interfere with the continuing cycle of the tank.

Continue with the Jungle Fizz Tabs and Garlic to rid him of IP's and continue your water changes to dilute the toxins in the tank.

You asked why you suddenly showed nitrates and I don't think you got a real good answer yet. Seeing the nitrate spike is a good thing. As a tank cycles you develop different strains bacteria to help oxidize the different toxins created. Simply put the first is Nitrosomonas that oxidizes ammonia to nitrite, second is Nitrobacter that oxidizes nitrite to nitrate. Your cycle was starting to level off the ability to properly handle ammonia as was shown by the drop without a big water change and due to the higher levels of nitrite you had a bloom of Nitrobacter and it's friends to process that off and nitrite in to nitrate. If you added the Dr. Tim's you really got a good dose of of all the differing strains of nitifying bacterias also that aided in the process at an early point in the cycle, causing your nitrates to spike.

Thank you. This is probably one of the most helpful posts yet.

I was confused by the nitrate just because it seemed as though my tank isn't old enough to be accumulating that much nitrate, but if my cycle is moving along that well, thats fine with me! I haven't used Dr. Tim's yet, but I'm going to once I order a 50lb box of that key largo rock later this week.

today he ate the treated snail, and I'm going to pick up more snails tomorrow and just start feeding him snails exclusively since he won't eat blood worms anymore. I've counted like 4 or 5 egg clusters in my snail tank, so hopefully I'll have small snails crawling around before too long. I just used the medicine today, no garlic, just because I was worried the garlic might have made him not eat it. So at least I can be sure he got a decent dose of meds, I'm going to go back to using both the tablet and garlic in the next few days though.

[Pufferpunk]

He should be fat & sassy in no time!

[LongGrain]

what should my water change schedule be?

I did 50% the night before last.

[Pufferpunk]

Depends in your test results. Minimum is 50% weekly, until you can get enough LR.