The Puffer Forum

I was gonna post in the morning but I think i'll go ahead and post now.

120 gallon tank with 1 2.5 inch fahaka puffer
Ammonia and nitrite 0
nitrate 10
nothing has changed in the tank
he won't really eat for me but i've tried, market shrimp, blood worms, krill, mysis shrimp, and clam (some success with this)
aquarium has been set up for a month, fishless cycled and showed stable 'perfect' readings for a week with me feeding the tank daily

So two issues really. Issue number 1 I can't get him to eat. He picks at food and he'll take blood worms into his mouth and then spit them back out but he won't really eat. Now it's highly possible he's pouting, he's only been in the tank for three days so I wouldn't worry and think he's just settling in except he's so dang skinny!

I saw a poop it was round and brown for lack of a better word but there was clear mucous too that was stringing it together so I'm thinking an IP treatment is in order but when? Should I treat him now or wait until he's settled in? I worry because he's so skinny and doesn't want to eat, it'll be too much stress on him. Also how exactly does one go about treating a three inch fish in a 120 gallon tank. I don't have a quarantine tank because it's currently housing an acara.

He is eating something just not a lot. I put in a chunk of clam which he went for but he takes a few bites and then ignores it. A few hours later he'll come back and take a few more bites and then swim away. All other food that I have offered has been completely ignored. Like I said, he'll put blood worms in his mouth but he spits them back out. He is swimming around his tank and otherwise being very active. He's just anorexic! Any help would be appreciated.

I'm obsessive compulsive about this little guy. He's got me all insanely worried about him.

Have you tried soaking his food in garlic extract? It has a powerful draw for puffers. You also may end up feeding live food for a while and try to wean him to frozen. With the frozen food try to give him as natural of a presentation as possible. Clams on the half shell, Mussels are an excellent food also.

Once you get him eating you can try to treat for IP's by using food soaked in meds.

Contact the supplier & find out what he was eating (if anything...). Try gut-loaded ghost shrimp. After he is eating those sucessfully, treat the foods you feed the shrimp with IP meds. It will probably kill them but hopefully he will be used to eating them already. You might want to gutload & kill them before feeding him the medicated ones. Get him medicated ASAP.

Okay I'll go ahead and start the treatment. I've read the article in the library on treating IPs. I seem to have done what I usually do and worry to soon. He seems to be doing a lot better this morning. He was actively hunting for food this morning and the tiny bit of clam I put in there last night was all gone. Since it was attached to the shell I don't think it floated off somewhere to rot but I tested the water anyway and everything came back the same as last night. 0,0, and 10ish. So I decided to try to trick him. I had soaked a market shrimp in vitamins overnight so I took it out and cut it up. Then I fished the clam shell out and cleaned it off real good and mushed a few pieces of the market shrimp back in it. Worked like a charm. He saw the shell and hit it before he realized what it was (last night he turned his nose up at market shrimp). I guess he decided he liked it because he ate it all and when I left he'd settled down under one of the plants with a nice bulging belly to digest.

The seller said he was eating frozen blood worms, market shrimp, mysis, and brime. All of which I tried so I think it really was a matter of giving him time to settle in.

Thank you guys for the help. Knowing it's okay to go ahead and treat him makes me feel better.

That's great!!!!!

Well my usual lfs didn't have anything to treat for parasites except for this stuff that you mix into the water. I hit PetsMart on the way home just on the off chance. All they had was the little fizzy tablets and it would have taken 12 tablets to treat my tank. The oral method seems to be the way to go. So I wrote down all the options in the library article and I'm going to start calling places tomorrow morning. The person I trust the most at my lfs told me most marine places should carry metronidazole ignoring the fact that this lfs has both fresh and salt stock. They don't have many products but they do have the cleanest tanks in town *shrug*. Ratchet's appetite seems to have returned with a vengeance. I gave him seven or eight tiny snails tonight and he hit them before they could hit the ground. He belly was bulging and now three hours later it's flat again. I also saw him expelling what looked to be a string of pearls so I think that's a definite possitive on the IPs. I want to get him treated asap! I don't think I'm going to see much weight gain in the mean time. On the plus side his activity levels have improved phenomenally and he now swims up to meet me at the glass. He definitely doesn't look like a fish on his way out despite his weight. Hopefully, he'll pull through for me. Should I up his feedings? My thought was if his belly went flat to offer him food? With the IPs I know he can't be getting much out of what he's eating. I am dosing all his food liberally with vitamins.

That makes sense to me.

Okay so I got the meds from the store. It was the melanidazole (sp.?). It came in tablet form and the guy told me to disolve a half a tablet and soak his food in it. So I soaked his clam in it and he ate it no problem. He seems all right. Still very active and a hearty appetite even if it is only for snails or clam. The guy suggested treating him again in a few days just to be sure. Does anyone agree with this or should I wait longer? Haven't seen any dead worms yet.

I would treat it with every feeding for a few days at least.

Metro is an five day treatment with every feeding and repeatable after a 7 day break.

Hey mate be careful only feeding him small prey. Because if he gets used to just those foods he will never eat larger food that gets his jaws really moving!! Frozen Krill is termed (Fish Crack) for e.g if porcupine puffers are only fed krill as they grow older they can develop LockJaw because they never fed on larger food. Also all those live foods from Pet Shops are riddled with Internal parasites / Worms and eggs etc all of which can lead to illness. From my experience Fahakas are very hardy fish but no need to test that ! To ensure your puffer will grow to be Big and Strong feed it quality food, Human Safe Shellfish like Prawns and Mussels from your local supermarket not your fish shop, Mussels from your local supermarket are fresh and full of nutrients minus all the Bugs but full of fat / protein that he needs to bulk up! Also Cockles in the Shell are good to help keep Fahakas teeth in check. Live Shrimps are good now again but not all the time! I used to give my fahaka bloodworms and krill he never ate one of them he starved til I figured out that he wants real meat I gave him that first mussel and he loved. AS your puffer gets bigger youll see their preference towards whole prawns / mussels rather than skimpy snails.

I started out with a Fahaka same size as yours and in 6 months he grew trust me
8" Long:

qtrhorse I applaud you for having your little guy is his adult size tank, as they do grow quite quickly, the best of luck with him.
Walrus Head have your upgraded your 20gl tank for your ever growing guy yet??

Walrus Head wrote:Frozen Krill is termed (Fish Crack) for e.g if porcupine puffers are only fed krill as they grow older they can develop LockJaw because they never fed on larger food.

That's not true. It's a chemical thing.

This is a three-inch fish, so I don't think he needs anything too big yet. Worms, small shrimp, the occasional bit of krill, and so on are plenty big for him, I think.

Krill is still underinvestigation as to why it causes lockjaw in fish (mostly porcpuffs). I have been feeding live worms from bait shops & the LFS for >30 years.

Not a problem on feeding since the only thing he'll eat is clam and snail. He ignores the smaller foods and I can only get him to take a bite of market shrimp if I shove it into a clam shell. Might give an earth worm a try maybe. As advised above I will continue treatment with the metro for another four days. Still seeing stringy poops but it's not as white and for the first time today his belly actually stayed distended for most of the day after feeding. I think he's gained a wee bit of weight too. When I came home today and opened the door he saw me, or the door opening who knows which, and came over to the side of his tank closest to the door to greet me.

Trekenk thank you. I dcided to get him a tank that would last at least for four or five years. He will eventually go into at least a 180 hopefully. I wanted him to have room to grow plus moving a fish once they get that size is just so stressful on both the owner and the fish that I didn't want to risk putting him in a smaller tank at first. Better to do it this way I decided and then only have to make that one move down the line.

Walrus Head you have a gorgeous Fahaka. But he's not really in a 20gl tank is he?