Worming My Puff

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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Read this before posting!!

Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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gbmortie
Puffer Fry
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Apr 01, 2008 10:40 pm

Worming My Puff

Post by gbmortie »

I think my puffer has IP's so today I started him on krill soaked with garlic guard and Gel Tek for IP's. How does that sound? I think he would eat the krill without the GG on it, should I leave that out? I just wanted to make sure he took his medicine :D . He doesn't eat anything other than krill yet but I wanted to get him treated for IP's first before I worry too much getting him to eat something else. All they fed him at lfs was krill so he's a krill-head lol.

Anything else I should be doing?
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Myaj
Tech Team
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Joined: Sat Jun 04, 2005 12:27 pm
Gender: Female
My Puffers: Bubba, turgidus
Paris, lined burrfish
Location: SE Wisconsin
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Re: Worming My Puff

Post by Myaj »

I would stick to the garlic for now, supposedly it makes it taste better and it is a natural antiparasitic, so no harm, no foul.

If he's eating it, that's the hardest part! Make sure you do water changes with good gravel vaccumings 24 hours after dosing, and preferably again after that. You want to remove any purged parasites, just incase some aren't completely dead, so they don't reinfect the fish.
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bazil323
Green Spotted Puffer
Posts: 312
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 1:51 pm
Gender: Female
My Puffers: Two Figure 8 puffer, Grun & Schnitzel
Location (country): Northern Wisconsin, USA
Location: Northern Wisconsin

Re: Worming My Puff

Post by bazil323 »

You can also treat with those parasite tabs that you drop into the water to kill the expelled parasites in addition to the things you're doing and what Myaj suggested.
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Content2Swell
Dwarf Puffer
Posts: 90
Joined: Thu Apr 17, 2008 2:33 pm
My Puffers: :(
Location: New Mexico

Re: Worming My Puff

Post by Content2Swell »

I've found the tabs to work very well in fact.
Job 12:7-10. But ask the animals, and they will teach you; or birds of the air
and they will tell you; or speak to the earth and it will teach you; or let the fish
of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the
lord has done this. In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all
mankind.
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