The Puffer Forum

Water:(Jungle 5-in-1 test strip and Aquarium Pharmaceuticals ammonia test): ph 7.0, ammonia 0, nitrite 0,
nitrate 10 mg/l, no added salt

Tank and filtration: 75E (75 gallons) set up 3 months ago using 2 Aqua Clear 110's and a Penguin 330. All 3 filters were fully cycled 6-12 months prior to use on this tank.

Tank inhabitants (including cleanup crew) : 2 6" T. sabahensis, 3 2" red-tail sharks, 1 2.5" albino rainbow shark, 2 2" clown loaches, 1 3" golden clown knife, and 1 5" glass knife.

Feeding: Fed daily or every other day (fed when prior days food seems to have been passed). Food provided (in order of frequency) live clams and frozen shrimp (from grocery store meat counter), Hikari brand frozen and freeze dried krill, live gut-loaded ghost shrimp.

Changes in the last week include the usual 50% weekly water change and the disappearance of 2 red tail sharks and subsequent removal of the 5" electric catfish that ate them (this catfish grew really fast).

Problem Fish: These puffers were sold as fresh water fish labeled either "Burmese Puffers" or "Giant Burmese Puffers" by at least two distributors supplying LFS's. According to the LFS where these two were purchased, their two distributors said these fish were caught well inland in a fresh water river. According to the few photos we've found on the internet, these fish appear to be T. sabahensis, Though T. sabahensis is often sited as a brackish water fish.

Problem Description The two puffers, Tator and Spud, have developed strange white areas that look like granuals embedded in the skin (as opposed to being on the surface like ich or fungus). Tator's is on his back, and Spud's is above his snout where he appeared to have cut his snout on a clam shell. The spot on Tater's back doesn't look like an injury. We treated it with liquid bandage but it was larger and whiter the next day. Any diagnostic or treatment advice would be greatly appreciated.

Photos of the spots are attached.
edit:fixed minor typos

Have the fish had a behavior change at all?
These fish need high end brackish to full marine water when adults, and yours definitely need it ASAP. That could be part of your problem, when these fish are kept in FW their immune system starts to decrease and they are prone to many diseases and infections.
None of the other fish in the tank can tolerate salt though, so it might be best to rehome the others or rehome the puffers.
I think you should treat the puffers With Melafix and Pimafix, to help heal that white stuff a bit and prevent further infection.
Also Test strips are extremely innacurate, I'd reccomend getting a liquid test kit or bringing some water to your LFS/LPS and have them test it.

I agree with the above. 75g is barely large enough to house just the puffers. The glass knife will probably be harassed by the puffers & the Golden clown knife (is that an albino?) can grow to 3-4'.

I must say, it's good to see such a thorough hospital thread, but unfortunately I have no idea what that is. sounds almost like velvet, but doesn't really look like velvet. I also agree with the above. hopefully it will help.

Those are sometimes what happens after a very severe puffer bite, that exact whiteness. But it's not always caused by a bite, it's a severe skin erosion of any sort. I'd see if brackish water helps, some puffers from FW in the wild can't do it in captivity(Figure 8's).

Thanks!

As far as biting goes, these 2 puffers are not at all aggressive towards any fish, let alone each other. Despite being offered food items at opposite ends of the tank, they sometimes insist on going after the same piece of food. Tator (aka Dictator) is the dominant one of the 2, and when this happens, Spud either backs off after a look from Tator, or they take turns and share. We think it would be unlikely that Tator would be bitten on the back. Sometimes they startle when we walk by the aquarium at night; that could possibly be the cause of a back injury.

We thought that they should be brackish too, and have tried salt before, but they seemed to dislike any (marine) salt above 1.0025 sg. When we gradually increased the salt to 1.003 sg over several days, they got more distressed with the more salt added (rapid gilling, open mouths, bottom sitting, etc.) . These symptoms disappeared when we reduced the salt. We were told by 2 LFS's using at least 2 distributors that these fish were caught very far upriver and the supplier was very certain that these were freshwater fish. However, we will try 1.001 sg and see if that helps anything. It shouldn't hurt. We've also been told that there is speculation that these fish are T. mbu hybrids.

As an aside, the glass knife seemed afraid of the puffers, so he has moved out. This leaves 4 small sharks, 2 small clown loaches, and 1 small golden (metallic light brown) clown knife (who will move to one of our other tanks when necessary ). We based our stocking on the recommended 30 gallons per adult GSP and the remaining 15 gallons for the other appropriately sized "clean-up crew". They'll be moved to other tanks as necessary, just as the electric catfish and glass knife were.

Good thing you have so many tanks for upgrades. The "giant" puffer will grow larger than the average GSP.

It would be really interesting to see how they are do at various SG's, as very little is known about these puffers. There is a "hole" in the puffer trade for a mid sized, 5-8" active FW puffer, and if these do well long term with little or no salt, that would be a really good thing for the trade. I guess it's entirely possible VERY similar puffers from upriver and downriver with different SG preferences for comfort will exist in the trade.

We both apologize if some of you felt our first post ignored or glossed over some of the points raised. There was a lot of data provided in reply to our questions and it took a while to process it all.

Nick wrote:Those are sometimes what happens after a very severe puffer bite, that exact whiteness.

We think your conclusion that these spots are due to injuries is exactly right. We know the spot on Spud's snout was at an injury site caused by energetic feeding on a clam with a cracked but unopened shell. We stopped giving them live clams with cracked shells because of the risk of facial cuts resulting from the sharp edges. They bite the half-shells anyway as they use their teeth to scrape every bit of flesh off the shells.
While Tater's back didn't look injured, it very well may have been an injury site. The spot is roughly the same size aas the end of an AquaClear 110 filter intake tube. Such an injury isn't unlikely since these fish have been startling more easily recently (more on this below).

crazedpuffer wrote:Have the fish had a behavior change at all?

Yes, in the last few weeks both fish have become much jumpier than they were previously. They began startling when we walked past the tank. We've adopted a practice of walking more slowly when passing by their tank so as to prevent the startle response. At about that time the jumpiness started we also noticed that our municipal water supply became softer and more acid (Ph 6.5 or so rather than 7.0). When we discovered this we added Seachem's product "Neutral Regulator" during weekly 50% water changes (first week). After the first week we changed to the Kent product "RO Right" after noting that the Seachem product uses phosphate buffers (Why?). We now use these products with all fresh water changes to give our very soft water a pH closer to 7.0 and add buffering capacity to help keep it there. Both products were used at 1tsp/10gal.

crazedpuffer wrote:These fish need high end brackish to full marine water when adults, and yours definitely need it ASAP.

When we purchased these fish we had the same view you expressed here. As we noted in our previous reply the fish didn't seem to like the added salt. Distributors' claims that these fish are fresh water and come from far upstream and online findings such as the one at http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forum ... hp?t=86680 have caused us to question this conclusion. Regardless, the addition of up to .001 salt is often prescribed as a way to reduce osmotic stress on sick fish so we've started raising the salinity to the .001 level.

crazedpuffer wrote:I think you should treat the puffers With Melafix and Pimafix, to help heal that white stuff a bit and prevent further infection.

We both agree. The spots seem to be getting smaller so we're inclined to do nothing immediately. However, if there are any signs that the problem is getting worse we'll do exactly as you recommend.

crazedpuffer wrote:Test strips are extremely innacurate, I'd reccomend getting a liquid test kit...

We did as you suggest, and found that the higher pH readings on our salt water tanks were very inaccurate. Fresh water readings near pH 7.0 were more accurate. We're not sure if the difference is caused be the salt or the pH range.

On the topic of test kits we've been unable to find even one Copper test kit that gives an accurate reading. The three we've tried so far, Seachem, AP, and API, all failed to give meaningful results. These products have no expiration date yet apparently deteriorate over time so as to give low readings. The result can be fishkeepers killing their fish after relying on the test results.

On the topic of copper, there is one copper treatment product that killed all the fish in one of our tanks and almost killed the fish in a second tank. According to the manufacturer's web site, Seachem's Cupramine causes false positives on at least some ammonia tests. Further, they also state that using anti-ammonia products, such as Prime, can cause Cupramine to breakdown into ionic forms that are 10 times more toxic than Cupramine, resulting in a copper overdose. The lethal combination of these two products made by the same company is negligence in our view. Note there are no warnings on the label of either product.

Pufferpunk wrote:The glass knife will probably be harassed by the puffers.

These puffers don't seem to regard other fish as food and show no interest in them. Regardless, we rehomed the knife because the puffers scared it.

Pufferpunk wrote: The Golden clown knife (is that an albino?) can grow to 3-4'.

No it isn't albino.

Nick wrote:It would be really interesting to see how they [ed.] do at various SG's, as very little is known about these puffers.

We'll keep you posted. It may be a while before we have anything to report. We learned the hard way that significant salt adjustments must be done over many days so as to prevent harming filter bacteria. In the past we've ended up having to do large daily water changes to combat ammonia and nitrite levels. To avoid the need for daily changes we tried using Jungle's product Ammonia Clear, but we've come to suspect that this product either kills or suppresses re-establishing a normal nitrogen cycle. (Comments?) Most of the products sold to solve problems in aquariums seem to cause problems that are as bad or worse than the problem the product is supposed to solve.

Nick wrote:There is a "hole" in the puffer trade for a mid sized, 5-8" active FW puffer, and if these do well long term with little or no salt, that would be a really good thing for the trade.

Yes! As best as we can tell, these puffers began showing up as FW fish under a variety of common names some time last year. The link we provided above is an example. On the other hand, the photos we've seen suggest that these puffers are the brackish water fish t. sabahensis. Hopefully, these fish are not just brackish fish sold as FW so as to increase the supplier's sell-though (Like the marketing ploy said to have been used to sell the (human) food fish Chilean Sea Bass, a fish that is neither a relative of Sea Bass nor from Chili).

Again, our thanks to all of you for taking the time to write!

Ammonia clear and similar products seem to bind the ammonia into a form not available to the nitrogen cycle. I've used prime quite successfully for this, however it binds ammonia and nitrite leaves them bioavailable to the nitrifying bacteria but at reduced toxicity to fish. I've heard amquel is safe for the biofilter, but is toxic to fish at overdose, while I've overdosed with prime during deadly spikes and even ten times the recommended dose didn't harm the fish.

Nick, thanks for the information re: your experience with Ammonia clear and Prime.

UPDATES:

Re: White Spots

The white spots at the injury sites on these two fish continue to shrink. At this point, we see these spots as normal disease-free healing of minor injuries and feel there is no cause for concern. The cause for the injuries is something we are seeking to address. We definitely don't see the injuries as the result of biting since these two fish don't exhibit aggression towards each other or any other fish. This is very different from the behavior we've seen from GSP, Leopard, and Congo Puffers which in our experience show aggression toward any fish small enough to consider food, including other puffers.

Re: These fish requiring brackish water.

After adding 4 Tbs of marine salt to 75 Gallons on two consecutive days, both fish were clamping fins, bottom sitting, showing dull coloration, and exhibiting black bellies. We changed their water back and they both immediately returned to normal. We do not feel that these are brackish water fish. Because this topic is not a hospital topic, we're going to continue this aspect of this thread on the thread Umbrella started on the PufferPedia forum.

Mines been in freshwater for several weeks now and no difference in behaviour or health has been noticed .

Didn't realize you were trying that Hilly. It would be AWESOME Sabahensis is really a true FW fish... if so, it would quickly become one of the most desirable puffers on the market.

Hilly wrote:Mines been in freshwater for several weeks now and no difference in behaviour or health has been noticed .

It's good to know that we're not alone keeping our t. sabahensis in FW. We've begun experimentation with water hardness and pH trying to find the values that make them happiest. Our water parameters were posted at the beginning of this thread, what is your water like? How did you go about making the salinity change?

The R&A Collective.

Just a quick FYI for those who may be curious. The white spots that inspired this thread are now completely gone. The skin at the location where the spots were seen is now indistinguishable from the surrounding skin. Though we used Liquid Bandage once on Dictator, we've concluded that the spots were nothing but fishy-scabs. We think they were minor injuries that in the future we will leave to heal without treatment (unless the spots appear to become infected).

Our thanks to everyone who participated in this thread.