The Puffer Forum

Hi, over the last week my fahaka has not been to good she has changed colour from nice and light with bold stripes to all most black more so round her face but her belly is still very light and a good colour, and is not so active as normall.

Water parameters, Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrates 5, Ph 7.5, Temp 27c/80f, Water change 50% a week and she is in a 120g tank.

Over the week she has been feed 20 small feeder shrip gut loaded with Spectrum optimum with garlic for the vitamins,2 Apple snails and some mussels

She is defanatly not happy has any one got any ideas

not sure specifically, but feeder fish should not be the main diet for any puffer. read the feeding articles in the library. essentially, feeder fish contain too much fat which can poison your puffer. they are also often riddled with disease if you buy them from the LFS. gut loading does little to help their nutritional value.

most people here will tell you to use shell on, raw, frozen and thawed shrimp as their main diet.

I have never feed her fish only feeder shrimp

matt77 wrote:I have never feed her fish only feeder shrimp

ha! now i feel stupid, i read "fish" not shrimp... dunno how i did that....

Does she look bloated at all? How old and big is she?

I'm not really sure what to suggest.

No she is not bloated as for age not shaw about 2 years old and she is just under 15 inches

did she eat the snails whole? just wondering if part of the shell scraped her insides or something...

are your tests accurate, can you get a second test done at LFS... just to confirm them?

t1gerbee wrote:did she eat the snails whole? just wondering if part of the shell scraped her insides or something...

are your tests accurate, can you get a second test done at LFS... just to confirm them?

no she crushed the snails. I will get my lfs to test the water

mala wrote:

matt77 wrote:I have never feed her fish only feeder shrimp

ha! now i feel stupid, i read "fish" not shrimp... dunno how i did that....

i read feeder fish too, i thought this was gonna be an easy one

Is she swimming/eating normally? Have you noticed her poo lately?

Pufferpunk wrote:Is she swimming/eating normally? Have you noticed her poo lately?

Yep she is up and swimming not as much as she would be normally, i gave her some mussel on wednesday and she only had one and left the rest, due to feed her tonight so we will see how that goes but she does seem hungry as she went for my finger yesterday. It looks brown and normal.

how about a pic of her discoloration with a pic of her when she was healthy. She might have a skin fungus is she flashing against her decor or does she look slimey in anyway?

apachepufferman wrote:how about a pic of her discoloration with a pic of her when she was healthy. She might have a skin fungus is she flashing against her decor or does she look slimey in anyway?

pics

wow, that's some change.. ! poor puff! Her belly still looks very full.. i'm assuming she hasn't eaten since she got sick? I wonder if she has something stuck inside her, like a bit of shell... and it's making her constipated? Think pp recommends epson salt for constipation...

Or worse, she could have damaged the stomach lining.. or something similar...

not sure what you could do about it even if she did have though...

as pp says, has she poo'ed since she got ill?

did you get your water test results back from lfs yet?

t1gerbee wrote:wow, that's some change.. ! poor puff! Her belly still looks very full.. i'm assuming she hasn't eaten since she got sick? I wonder if she has something stuck inside her, like a bit of shell... and it's making her constipated? Think pp recommends epson salt for constipation...

Or worse, she could have damaged the stomach lining.. or something similar...

not sure what you could do about it even if she did have though...

as pp says, has she poo'ed since she got ill?

did you get your water test results back from lfs yet?

Hi she has been to the loo so i know that she is not constipated and the test at the lfs came back as Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10, Ph 7.2 as for the full belly that is normal she is a big girl.