The Puffer Forum

Hello,
So I have four happy south Amercian puffers, all so far without need of densitry, but, it's early days for me and i am aware that denistry is probably ineveitable so have bought cutile clippers and trying to source some ms222.
My local Vet could supply it at a cost of £50 for me in the uk. That's alot of dough.

But I've found some online here http://www.pharmaq.co.uk for £25 for 25g.
Given that i have four S.A.P.'s should i go for a larger quantity if i am going to have to do this every six month or so?
Or does it have a use by date?

Alsowhat kind of dose would i put in a 2l container?
The guideline for the meds on the pharmaq website are very general for everything from trout, salmon, and ornamental fish. but puff are sensitive critters.

Loving the forum and thanks for the excellent advice in advance!
( P.S. I read the dentistry arctile, trying to stay calm...)

Honestly, I'd go with the smaller quantity. You don't need much and it should last a pretty decent amount of time. How long have you had your SAP's and do you have a feel yet for how often they need trims? Some go a good long time between, others need it every 3 months.

I really wish I had gotten a chance to test mine out, but my Figure 8 passed away before I trimmed his teeth (he had other health issues). My current two puffers don't need tooth trimming, so I have the entire bottle sitting here, and never actually had a chance to try it and get a feel for how much to use. I'd just ship it to you, but don't know how well shipping meds over country lines would go, plus I'd rather keep it on hand just in case of emergency I suppose.

Personally, I would go the route of fast sedation as listed for the ornamental fish.. so a higher amount with less exposure time (expose the fish to the sedation water only until they are out cold, remove from water to trim teeth, put in clean recovery water). Be sure to use a container you can shake up.. get that MS222 really well mixed in, same as you would with Clove Oil, before you add the fish. That seems to make things work smoother and easier.

Hi - just thought I'd let you know that there's another product available without going through your vet that is priced a little less also. It's called 'Koi Sedate' and it's by Kusuri. I bought it to use on my SAP's and you don't need very much and it works just fine. Puts them to sleep and then they come back looking and behaving as if nothing happened.

Get in touch if you are interested in knowing more about this product. Just thought I'd mention it as an alternative to the MS222.

Hi Ulysees. The 25g pot will be plenty. The dose rate is 0.03g - 0.05g per litre of tank water. (so only 0.3g - 0.5g per 10 litres!!) It is a tiny tiny amount. Impossible to measure accurately unless you have some really good scales. There is a fairly large margin of error though & I ended up just using it to effect.
Hope that helps!

Thanks for the advice,
Wow given that i dont have accurate scales for ms222 and i'm not a vet maybe koi sedate is a better option?
I google'd koi sedate, so this is only sedative not ansthetic so should be milder?