The Puffer Forum

Hi,
I'm new here and I'm seeking some much needed help.
We have a porkupine puffer that we have had for about 6 months (5-6 in.)that has stopped eating, and all he wants to do is hover on the bottom in a front corner of the tank. I have tried to put the food in front of him but he just acts scared. He doesn't seem to have the tooth problem I've been reading about on here, However due to our lack of knowledge and this being our first tank we do have a 225gal. but don't want to get ahead of ourselves and we have listened to our LFS and they said he would be fine with just having a diet of FD Krill and that treats for him would be snails and other hard crustations so he has not a very healthy diet.
I have learned more today on this site than at the LFS in the past 8 months, Diddys tank mates are 1 snowflake eel, 1 blenny, 1 huma huma trigger, 1 tomato clown, 1 striped sailfin, 1 fire goby.
My tank is only a 65 gal. we have 2 pro magnum 350 filter setups,w/4 bio wheels ( I just added the second 350 pro setup last weekend) 1 protien skimmer and 1 inline heater. Our temp stays rock solid @ 78-79 degrees, we just checked all levels = nitrites-0, nitrates-0, amonia-0, ph-7.8 we added ph up, sg-1.025/1.023. We do 20% water changes about once a month.
I've been reading about lockjaw and this seems as it may appy since when I watch him his mouth doesn't seem to move even when food is rubbed on his lips. he seems frustrated with the way we arranged the rocks in the tank because he stays in the one corner and when he does swim around he acts as though he thinks the rocks are in his way and then he goes up the glass alittle then settles on the bottom.
Is it true that once lockjaw has set in it's most likley too late for saveing?
All our LFS could offer up was to say he must be real sick and they could give us some stuff to mix in a seperate waterbowl that would put him out of suffering .

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to get as much info out as poss. Thanks in advance, Mark

I forgot to say we had a Fuzzy Dwarf Lion and about a month and a half ago it vanished from our tank! When we didn't see him on the second day we rearranged the tank moving everything and to no avail he was gone. It was soon after that Diddy started acting this way. Is it possible that he ate him (the Lion) and has been poisoned?
Our tank has been up for about 9 months we used live sand to start it and we let it cycle for about 3-4 weeks then put some Damsels in and when the levels were good we went for the more desired fish and removed the damsels and took the back to the LFS.

Welcome to the forum.
I guess the lion could have done it but I don't think it would still affect him.
Chances are its lock jaw, but thats incredibly hard to cure. I think it would probablly be best to wait for pufferqueen on this one.

I doubt it is poisoning. A diet of only freeze dried krill will lead to a conditon called lock jaw. It takes weeks to months to develop and when symptoms are visible, it is often too late. Force feeding/tube feeding may help. NO more krill.

Try offering gut loaded shrimp.
Can you post a pic of your puffer?

Here is a link: http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic72164-10-1.aspx

I'm waiting on pins & needles for the results of that study!

Sorry I did not reply quicker I had kidney stones BLASTED today and just got home. I'll try the shrimp ASAP.
I tried to upload some pics of Diddy but my wife has to change the settings on our camera, the site said our pics were to large to fit?
My wife just added some frozen brine & mysis shrimp for everyone and he seemed to get arroused by it but then just settled back on the bottom hovering.
This is going to be a HUGE disappointment as he is the most loved fish we have (not that we play favorites). Thanks, Mark

I use irfanview to resize pics to fit them on here.

Have you had much of a problem maintaining high PH? PH up is generally not recommended, as it only temporarily affects the PH, and can cause rapid swings, having a large bag of crushed coral in the filter is better, as it's easily refreshed and not only buffers PH, but increases carbonate hardness, which is at least as important to most high PH fish as the actual PH is.

We usually have to use a little ph up, the rest of our levels are always right on we have no nitrates, no nitrites, and no ammonia we use Vermont pure spring water that is sold from a distributor and we get it in the big 5 gal. jugs that we also use on a home dispenser then and we use Instant Ocean Salt and we keep our SG @ 1.022-1.023 we have to keep a close eye on evaporation so we don't get spikes in SG. We have never had any water condition problems since we started our tank 8-9 months ago.

why does feeding freeze dried krill lead to lock jaw?

what is it that causes the problem?

I would do your research on this site as this site is an EYE OPENER to dealing with puffers and I am still a newby to salt water. My Porcupine puffer stopped eating and started just hovering on the bottom in a corner at times he would get excited but still would not eat, our LFS told us FD Krill was a sufficent diet and I have read on here it is not although there are no specific tests to show that but they say its lack of iodine? We want another puffer but until we learn aliitle more we are going to wait. But as I said keep reading on here and you will learn allot, I spent many hours trying to get info to save Diddy but I was to late .

Please follow Puffer Queen's link above, for more info on feeding krill.