The Puffer Forum

So, i've had a tiny <1 inch porcupine puffer in my possession for the last three weeks...

she came to me with alot of problems, she was so skeletal i've called her ET as she had these huge eyes and no real body.. just a spine and a tail, she was just face down in the corner of the tank she came from and not moving..

The shop gave her to me for free, and said if i thought i could help, i was welcome to try.. so i took her.

FYI.. I change out 50% of her tank water daily, and buffer the 1.009 water back up to 8.2ph...

I wormed her as soon as she'd settled down, I began slowly feeding her mysis shrimp and river shrimp little bits every hour, she began to pick up, and will now actively swim after food when I put it in, she will also go after river shrimp (at night)... she will not eat anything else, i've tried shrimps anad cockles but she ignores it, and I am wary of fouling the hypo tank too fast... and just want her to eat, so stick to mysis and loaded river shrimp for the moment...

Unfortunately, within two days she was completely crusted over with ich, and breathing very heavily.. so i added an air stone and dropped the quarentine into hypo two weeks ago and all the visible spots are gone... and have not returned so far...

so now, she is ich free (still in hypo) and and is a little fatty, but she still isn't active.. she sits under her rock all day, although she will buzz out for food... but then goes straight back under her rock.. even when she's swimming after food, she stays very low to the ground, just hovering above the floor as she swims...


I keep her tank light off unless i'm checking for ich, although I have seen her out and about at night, when i walk in at night and flick the room light on, ...i sometimes catch her up by the glass, but flees as soon as she sees the light... the rest of the time, she sits under her rock...


any ideas what else I can do to get this little angel up and buzzing...? All ideas welcome....

Give her some time--she hasn't been well. How active would you be in her condition? Great job you're doing with her--I bet she's adorable!

not very i suppose... just hate it when puffers aren't very puffer-ish... it's un nerving....

keep peering under her rock and thinkng, can i see gill movement, can i see buzzing..

her eyes are amazing, they move independently and she watches you, she even studies the mysis before sucking it up, almost going cross eyed as she focuses in on one bit... that's why i kept her secret, was falling for her so fast, i was terrified i'd wake up and she'd be dead, and couldn't handle admiting that on line....

just hope she picks up a bit soon, gotta wait though, to bring her out of hypo.. then i'm hoping for a big change.... fingers crossed...

this is a photo of her a week after i got her, i didn't take a photo when i first got her as i really didn't think she'd make it....



this is after a week of worming and intensive feeding, so you can imagine what she'd looked like before... you can see the ich starting to take hold in this photo, so she was lowered into hypo the day after.... and has been there ever since...


I will try and get a photo now she's a little roly poly puffer and is ich free, but as she's become exclusively nocturnal it's not easy...!


still, meet ET....

Poor little baby.... It looks like you are doing a great job. I'm sure she will come around. I have been keeping the lights off on Selena's tank because of her eye infection. She tries to hide when I turn the lights back on but there is nothing in there to hide behind. I'm sure she will come around once she is feeling better and gets use to her surroundings. Selena would stare down her food before she sucked it up when she was feeling good. It was so cute to watch her. I had a hard time to get her to eat something other than ghost shrimp. Right now I am still feeding her with a syringe so I can't help you there. She ignored most food, I'm hoping when she can see again I can get her to eat other things. I know that after she would get a belly full she would go and hide under rocks until the next morning. It was like she needed a nap after she ate. Maybe that's what your little girl is doing. Have you tried to hand feed her? If you can get her to eat from your hand you might be able to introduce other foods. Maybe she just don't know that cockles are food. Just keep up the good work.

it's so fun when they stare down food... i have o idea how they survive in the wild, mine is so slow and considered..

' is it food... can i eat it... maybe i can....'

sneak, sneak, sneak... buzz buzz buzz...

'let's look from this angle, lets look from that angle....'

'ok, ready... stare it down, going cross eyed.... slurp.....'


i'm sure in the wild the food would have either walked off, or been gobbled by something faster....

none of my other puffers do this, they just attack and swallow...!