The Puffer Forum

I have a 120 gallon tank at my work that is maintained by a aquarium guy. I'm extremely attached to the fish even though I don't own them. The Porcupine Puffer especially.

I have in the tank:
Porcupine Puffer Fish
Damsel
Triggerfish
Crab
Toby Puffer Fish

I feed them Krill and Shrimp.

My Porcupine Puffer has obviously gone blind. He bumps into things, is hovering on one side of the tank and no longer comes up to me at the glass. The biggest problem is that he isn't eating, I'm assuming because he can't see the food. My tank got extremely out of whack and dirty for a week because the maintanence company never came to clean it for a few weeks. I called and yelled at him and he told me to buy some StressKote, which I did. The tank got cleaned about 4 days after putting the StressKote in and all my friends survived. But now I'm dealing with my puffer being blind. I've called the aquarium guy and he hasn't returned my calls yet- I'm very worried and am willing to take action on my own if there even is anything I can do to help my puffer. I was even thinking about coming up with a way to try to hand feed him if necessary.

Thank you!

Please answer all the above questions that are in red.
Also krill is not good for porcs, it can cause a disease called lockjaw, which will disable your porc from closing it's mouth so it can't eat, and will die. How does your puffers eyes look? Are they normal or do they look cloudy (aside from that blue/green glaze that is normally on them)

sorry for getting off of Puffs subject but really no krill for Porcs? What should you feed them

Krill is bad for puffers, you can feed them shrimp, clams, mussles, snails. There's an article in the library on other things to feed the puffer.

Puff's, I had a porc that went blind also. She eventually passed away from an unknown disease. I had great success with hand feeding her. I would puree shrimp, mussels, clams, vitamins and garlic guard, put it in a syringe and slowly squeeze it in the puffers mouth. I also used a toothpick to fill the syringe and get as much air out of it as possible. She got so use to eating from the syringe she would try to suck the food out of it. My porc was about 3-4", I would feed her until her tummy was rounded.

How difficult would it be for you to learn how to maintain that tank yourself? I would never leave my precious friends with someone who obviously didn't care about them. At least try to find a better maintenance company. Wold you please at least buy some test kits to test the water? Blindness is a sign of nitrite poisoning.

ithink if there was a few weeks between cleanign water issues were / are a problem. Also a 120 im not 100% sure that is big enough for porcs as they do grow large

Agreed, a 120 is *barely* big enough for an adult porc, and that's with no tankmates. You have major overstocking going on there.

Puffers are extremely dirty fish, messy eaters who put out a lot of waste. They also do not have scales and are very sensitive to anything "bad" in the water. So a few weeks without "maintence" and this tank could become very toxic to a puffer. StressCoat isn't going to help anything, and often makes things worse.

Are there any live corals or just the fish? if there are no corals, a saltwater tank isn't that complicated to take care of. You just need to learn how to mix up the water and salt.

But anyways, this tank will give you nothing but trouble and sick/dead fish until you figure out the overstocking problem.

Do you have permission from the owner to take on maintaining it yourself? Are they willing to get rid of some (most) of the fish? Seriously, research their full grown sizes and you'll see there is no way they can all survive in there.