The Puffer Forum

I woke up to find me newest GSP all puffed up, laying motionless on the floor of the aquarium. Who knows what made him puff but it looked to me like he was totally stuck. Usually hes a little 'scaredy cat' and very hyper but when I tried to pull him to the surface to help him, he didn't budge.

I gently held him in my hand, keeping him in the water ( so as not to scare him or allow him to stab me with his little prickers lol ) and I turned him sideways, so one gill/lung or whatever you want to call it was just barely out of the water and the other one was under the water. He started to 'yell' at me ( making noises at me, kind of like a chirp ) when I handled him.. but he made no attempt to swim away of break free. I began to gently tickle the side that was out of the water. After about 20 seconds of tickling he was able to push a tiny air bubble out of him that somehow he must have sucked in while puffing. After the air bubble escaped he deflated and swam away very fast and hid. Sorry little buddy! Haha, at least I got him to deflate safely and he is ok. Now I gotta keep an eye on him though. >.< Little bugger!

Anyways... hopefully you never have to have the heart attack I just did... but if you do, perhaps this story might help.

-UMB

Thank you for sharing! I'm glad he's ok.

Wow! Nice work!

Wow good job. If milton puffed up I would freak out and not know what to do, and now I know!

What did he look like puffed? Was he a complete round ball?

Geez, I didn't know that was the tactic for fixing a puffed puffer like that! Thanks for the info!

I was going to take a picture of him, but I was more worried about whether or not he was ok lol, so I skipped the photo and went straight to helping him. He was not a complete round ball, he only inflated like 80% or so. I couldn't even tell which one he was at first because he was puffed, had changed his colors and his spines were all visible. I was like, 'Dangit man, which one are you ??!'. I quickly narrowed it down to 2 possible puffers. I only have two who can color change, so it had to be one or the other. Their size difference is rather big..so I concluded it was the larger one.

Moony puffed up when I measured him, he was under the water, but somehow he did take in a little air, he managed to deflate himself though, a couple of tiny bubbles out of his gills and off he went.
Bonzo never bothered at all, just lay there while I held the ruler over him, cocky little bugger, and I have only measured them once, it's all been guess work before.
From what I've heard, it can be very difficult to deflate an air inflated little puffer as their inflation systems aren't necessarily fully operational or developed enough to deal with air intake, but I had previously heard stories of people gently massaging larger fish if for some reason they couldn't deflate themselves, so yeah, good job getting him down.