The Puffer Forum

sorry iv'e been gone for a while now. i was busy over the summer working and just moved into college and have been busy getting used to the college life. anyway everything has been going great with my puffers up until yesterday morning. so the story goes a little something like this.
so i had my girlfriend sleep over from sunday to monday, and late sunday night i hear this loud splashing sound coming from my fish tank. i looked over and noticed that romeo was lying on the bottom looking very moody and upset and even partially puffed up and juliet was swimming around just fine. i thought it was just a little bicker over sleeping in one of the plants so i thought nothing of it and turned off the lights and went to sleep. when i woke up i noticed that something looked a little odd about romeo's right eye while i was feeding him, the pupil loved very small and it was constantly looking down toward the gravel and a little red in color, like a reddish tint to the whole eye, and when he turned around teh other eye was perfectly normal and moving around searching for food. i think juliet attacked him last night and seriously injured his right eye. he's acting normal now but his eye still looked odd. do you think its anything to worry about or its just a battle scar he can live with teh rest of his life. my water parims are 0 for ammonia, nitrites, and between 0 and 25 ppm or nitrates. so the water is fine. ph is 6.6ish. i put some melafix in to battle any bacterial infections that could occur and i'm doing a water change tomorrow. what do you all think about this?

Not much more that you can do than what you've already done, imho. I'd have definitely dosed with Melafix, as you did - but other than that, all you can do is let him heal up...maybe keep the lights down low for a few days, just to help him relax.

Clean water and melafix.. get those nitrates down ASAP thought.

just cleaned the water so all those levels are down to 0 and the ph is still 6.6ish. the lights have been off all day and i dosed with melafix again after the water change. he's just been staying close to the bottom in the right back corner of the tank. i think he's just resting and a little scared so he doesn't want to venture out too far. he came up to eat this morning but it took him a while and he kept missing the blood worms, so i think his depth perception might be off. thanks for the help, i just wanted to make sure it was something he could live with and that it wouldn't be fatal.

*EDIT*

i meant to say the ph is 7.6ish. i typed it wrong both times. sorry, i'm running low on sleep do to this new work load from the professors.

ok so i woke up and turned the lights on to the tank today to wake everyone up so i could feed them, and i noticed that romeo's eye had a small amount of blood pooled at the bottom that wasn't there yesterday. should i be worried about this or is it just the after math of the attack? water parims are 0 across the board and ph is 7.6ish and temp is 79-81. his depth perception still seems off, he's having issues getting the blood worms and misses alot when he lunges at them. he does get some, but not nearly as many as he did before.

I wouldn't worry too much about the blood, mainly because there's probably not much you can do about it. Maybe what has happened to him is similar to what happens to us when someone gives us a black eye: the first day, it looks bad, then for a couple of days after it looks even worse.

If he's having trouble snagging bloodworms, maybe try giving him something bigger so that he can home in on it easier - something like a chunk of clam or oyster or shrimp.

He will be fine from the eye injury, even if he loses his vision, your main worry is making sure it doesn't get infected/fungused.. hence the clean water.

If it starts to swell, or grow some funky fuzz.. then we'll be talking antibiotics, or antifungal.. but clean water and a healthy immune system should prevent that.