The Puffer Forum

Our Porcupine is two years old. Big and healthy until recently.

90 gallon tank...a few other small fish... all healthy and friendly.

Over the last several months, his mouth has been "opening"...and staying that way. Now it basically looks wide open and is stuck that way. Now he can't take food in....gets excited when the food is served, but can't figure out how to eat anymore.

I have seen other fish in our tank over the last 5 years have a similar problem...and then they die slowly.

I was going to put "Charles" to sleep tonight, but thought I would see if anyone knows of any miracles first. I don't want him to suffer anymore.

John

Let me guess--your puffer's main diet is krill?
http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic72164-10-1.aspx

YES,

OH NO. THIS IS OUR FAULT???????

John

Pufferpunk,

I read the thread. And, thank you.

But it seems to refer to the locked jaw being locked shut. Charles' mouth is locked open. From your experience is this essentially the same thing.

The tube feeding sounds surreal, but am wondering if that is only relevant to the fish whose mouth is locked shut.

Thanks for your help.

John

Well, actually yes--you probably should have done research on the diet of your fish. On the other hand, I'd say this happens more often than not, since this is what all the LFS say to feed them.

Same thing, lockjaw can be open or shut. Open will make it easier for tube feeding. Do a search here for folks who have done this sucessfully.

I believe edmlfc1 is one who has done this sucessfully.

The krill, plus the stress that you're way too small tank put on the fish probably exacerbated the problem.

I missed the tank size for that fish. 90g really isn't too bad... depending on if all the other fish are much smaller.

john123 wrote:I was going to put "Charles" to sleep tonight, but thought I would see if anyone knows of any miracles first. I don't want him to suffer anymore

No don't do that mate, give the lil fella a chance and feed him with a tube, at least his mouths locked open

Are you able to get him out in a tub so as to feed him easier?

You could get one of those suringes yoyu get in the US for injecting marinade into your turkey, just leave the thin plastic needle out so there's a bigger hole for the food and finely chop up some king prawn, musscle meat or coclke meat and inject it down his throat.

He may not like you doing this but it's for the best

This may sound a bit twisted but if you do could you film it and show us?

I'd like to see how he gets on and whether he makes a recovery

I believe there are also vitamins Kelly recommends that should be mixed into that slurry. Certainly Selcon. You can do this--many of our members here have force-fed & saved their puffers.

Pufferpunk can this actually be reversed? That would be so good to hear.

I believe in rare cases it has been reversed.

I hope he pulls through! Do keep us updated about the porc.

I emailed you the step by step instructions per your request. Just in case you don't get them here they are:
Forgot to mention that you will still need to use selcon vitamins plus the b12.

Here's what you need:
Finquel to knock him out.
One bucket of water with finquel
One bucket of clean water with an airstone.
One syringe without a needle and a small piece of air tubing
Pure Vitamin b12
Mini chopper to purree his food.

Here's what I did:
1) I put the food in the mini chopper added the vitamins and purreed it.
2) I took the syringe attached the air tube about 1 1/2 inches long to the syringe. I put the food in the syringe and used a toothpick to get
all the air out and push the food down. Then you push the food through the syringe into the tubing.
3) I filled both buckets with saltwater from the tank. One liter each bucket. Then I took the tiny little spoon that comes in the saltwater test kit's
and put one spoonfull in one of the buckets of water. The other bucket I added an airstone.
4) I put the fish in the bucket with finquel, kept a close eye on it until it was not moving. My fish never went belly up, I just waited a few minutes
until they weren't moving anymore.
5) I then took it out of the bucket placed it on a towel, inserted the tube just past the gills and slowly squeezed the food into it's belly. Keep your
hand on it's belly so that you can feel it filling up.
6) I placed the fish in the bucket with the airstone to recover. Once it started swimming around I added it back to the tank. If you have other
tank mates you may want to wait until it's totally awake. Mine was the only one in the tank.
The whole process only took about 7-8 minutes.


There are step by step photo's on this thread. The only thing I done different is I used a larger syringe and air tubing for the feeding. My fish were much larger than the one in the pictures.

There are pictures in this thread:

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic91800 ... be+feeding

Edit: Also depending on the size of the fish you may need to use more finquel or less water. Pufferpunk may be able to help you more with the doseage.