The Puffer Forum

I dont know that anything is wrong per se but Monster the Fahaka Puffer has been acting strange lately. It could be nothing, but its starting to concern me.

We have had him since February and for the first time since June he is trying to bury himself again. The substrate is gravel that is about 2" deep, Monster actually looks kind of comical half buried in gravel with a few rocks on his head pretending to be invisible.

Soon after he tried to bury himself he started scraping himself against the rocks in the tank. Leaving abrasions on his skin. See images below. His attempts to bury himself have also scraped /discolored his skin around his mouth as well.

We do 50% wc weekly and the ammonia and nitrites are always at 0. I have an older test kit so I'm not able to measure nitrates at this time. Although I'm planning to take a sample into the LFS this weekend.

Its possible the two are not related but I dont like coincidences. Also soon after he started burying himself I added some gravel that had at one time been in our pond. I rinsed and scrubbed the gravel thoroughly to clean it but its possible that some residuals were carried over.

Thanks for any suggestions (or peace of mind) that ya'll can give.

MP
Sorry for the long post


Overall view of scraping:







Discoloration around the mouth







Close up of scraping

I'm no expert with Fahakas, but don't they do best with sand substrate deep enough to bury themselves in?

Your suspicions are correct; those are signs of illness.
I've seen that pattern before, discolouration behind the pectoral area and spots behind the caudal penducle. You're probably going to want to treat with a broad-spectrum antibiotic ASAP. Spectrogram, if you can find it, or KanaPlex from Seachem might be good places to start.

I admit that the mouth discolourations are new to me - I've never seen anything like that before.

And let me guess - do you see any white or grey excretions coming out of the affected pores?

No excretions anywhere. I'm pretty sure the facial discolorations around the mouth are possibly a result of him going face first into the gravel trying to bury himself.

Is there a name to the disease, or whatever this is? How would he have gotten it?

A few things I forgot in my earlier description. He hasnt been eating well, he hasnt been as active as usual, and I've been having problems with the heater, the current temp on the tank is 75 and the heater wont go higher, I just added another heater tonight to try and raise the temp.

Maybe the third picture was deceptive but in person it looks more like an abrasion than a lesion or a sore. I havent had much luck with anti-biotics in the past but I'm willing to try anything.

Thanks
MP