The Puffer Forum

Hello.

I need your help to try to identify and cure one of my GSP's.

I currently own 3 of them, i bought them almost one and a half years ago when they measured around 1cm. They are now 3cm long.

I keep them on a 54L tank. When they were young i used to have them on sg 1.007 water, right now i have them on 1.023. The increase was done slowly during the last year, with marine salt and water changes.

The water parameters i try to aim for are:

PH = 8.0 / NH3 = 0 / NO2 = 0 / KH = 5 german degrees, around 80 mg/L / Temp = 26 degrees Celsius

I am a little bit lazy with the water changes, i used to do them every two weeks (50% water changes), but now i do them usually once a month or every 2 months (50% of the water). Thus, the water parameters vary between:

PH - 7.5 and 8.2
NH3 - between 0.6 and 1.2
NO2 - between almost zero and 1.0
KH - between 50 and 80 mg/L
SG - constant, right now on 1.023
Temp - constant, 26º, sometimes a little bit higher during summer.

I have got a good 440 L/h external filter connected to the tank.

I feed my puffers bloodworms, krill, dry shrimps, 2 to 3 cm live shrimps i catch at the beach, sometimes live fish (zebra's and guppies), and snails from my other aquariums.

I bought the 3 puffers at the same time, from the same shop. After nearly 1 month one of them started developing a round white spot right behind the head, over the lateral fin. I though that one of the other 2 had bitten him (although i have never witnessed agression between them), or maybe he scratched on the rocks and did not pay much attention to this. After some time i medicated the whole aquarium with Melafix, according to the medication's instructions, but the white spot remained.

My ill puffer eats better than the other two, he is the first to approach the food and he only leaves it when his belly is nice and round. Therefore i did never care much.

The fish grew and the white spot grew along with him, as you can see on the pictures. The problem seems to only affect skin, it is already going around the eye and the lateral fin. One month ago another spot appeared close to the animal's tail.

I am afraid that this is causing agony to the fish and that it will eventually kill him one of these days. Does any of you have an idea of which disease this might be? How can it be treated? I have another tank where i can isolate him.

I attached 4 pictures of the fish. On one of them you can see one of the tank mates. None of the 2 fish has been affected by this illness in 1,5 years, therefore i think that this is not contagious.

Thank you all for your help.

Sonicb00m

Welcome to the forum!

Well if i'm thinking right 54L would be 15 us gallons. This is much too small for your three GSP's. Each GSP requires a min of 30 gallons which is somewhere around 120L each and your ammonia and nitrites are much too high...this will kill your fish if you cannot correct it. You should start with a large water change at once! and you must stay on top of your water changes in order to have healthy fish. I'm not 100% sure but your problem may be caused by the high amounts of ammonia and nitrites in the water...

Man, that sick puffer looks like the one I seen at WALMART poor thing. So first you need to do water change ASAP to control your ammonia and nitrites and then you could start a cure if its not to late.

Hi.

Thanks you very much for the first suggestion busybones.

I know you are right regarding the small size of my tank (1 gallon is approximatelly 3.78 liters, my tank is 11 gallons), and also about my water changing lazyness...

One more information i forgot to post. During the first 4 or 5 months i was changing 50% water every 2 weeks. At this time i was able to maintain the Amonia very close to zero, the Nitrites were almost zero after the water changes with a little bit (almost nothing) increase during the 2 weeks between changes. Anyway, the problem appeared immediatelly after the first month. The aquarium was cycled during 2 months before introducing the fish.

One thing does not seem to be right. I have 3 fish, i bought them from the same shop at the same time. They were all the same size, probably the same "batch" (even maybe the same hatch). Why is one of them ill and not all of them?

Any other suggestions about what the disease and the possible cure might be?

Thank you all once again for your help.

I think its some kind of fungus and it's a mater of time when other fish get sick. PIMAFIX should be used.

Very 1st thing you need to do right now, is a 25% water change. Do another one this evening & again 2-3x tomorrow & every day after that, until you can get them into a much larger tank (90+ g is recommended).

Add Pimafix & Melafix, replacing what you remove with each water change (use 1 drop/g).

As far as where this all started... I believe this puffer was bitten by one or both of the others. No surprise there--they are really stressed for territories in a tank that small. The added stress caused by the ammonia/nitrite burning the open wound is causing it to worsen.

Not to jump on the bandwagon, but you really must do more water changes .... going 2 months between water changes on a tank that small is just asking for trouble. Do you remove the uneaten food and waste daily from the tank at all? Even doing that will help some .... but water changes are SO important. Perhaps once you get your problems solved, you can find a new home for 2 of your puffers, that would be the humane thing to do, if you can't get a bigger tank for all 3 of them.

sonicb00m wrote
"One thing does not seem to be right. I have 3 fish, i bought them from the same shop at the same time. They were all the same size, probably the same "batch" (even maybe the same hatch). Why is one of them ill and not all of them?"

GSP's are wild caught so there is a very slight chance that they are from the same hutch. The one that has the problem with it's skin may be the less aggressive GSP you have and thus the one that got bit or injured by the other two. I'm with PP, if the puff got bitten the high amounts of Nitrite and Ammonia would cause problems with the affected area.

That sounds very painful. I can't imagine being burnt in a caustic environment with open sores, never mind for a potential 1.5 years.

Yeah sounds pretty rough right? I just hope sonicb00m can find a solution to the problem and get the poor guy healthy again.

Hello.

I checked my tank's logbook and i realised that i made a mistake when i posted the NO2 values. The NO2 is usually 0 or 0.1 (max).
The amonia level i posted is correct.

Whenever i prepare new water for the water changes (usually around 20L), i put the water directly from the tap into a bucket and add salt (+- 700g of marine salt). I leave it moving with either a pump, filter or air filter. 24 hours later when i check it the sg is usually correct (1.023), but my amonia levels are always already too high (0.6 / 0.7 mg/L). The PH went up out of my test's scale (>8.6) and i have to bring it down to the aquarium level using water conditioners (PH DOWN).

So, although i am able to have a low nitrite concentration, my amonia levels are always around 0.6-0.8.

I am preparing a QT with new water and i am going to try healing the fish with Melafix + Pimafix...

Thank you all for your wise suggestions.

Ah hah. So there's ammonia in your tap water too. I believe that means you need to neutralize it before putting it in the tank.

The nitrites at that low of a level should be a non issue with a salinity value that high.

However, the ammonia is a problem. I recommend just purchasing a water conditioner that can convert your ammonia to ammonium. Many brands can do this, and a conditioner that can do this will indicate on the label that it "removes" ammonia or renders it harmless.

Once your tank is cycled, changing the water should be a non-health issue. The ammonia will be converted into nitrites fairly quickly, and the nitrites will be converted to nitrates.

I like Prime the best for removing ammonia, but AmQuel and Amquel + in addition to multiple other brands do this.

Hello.

I've had my tank running for more than one year seven months... I cycled it for 2 months before introducing the 3 puffers... First i added the first water with salt (sg=1.007), i used to add Cycle - around 40ml each week during the first year. As wrote told on the latest emails my nitrite levels have always been always 0 or 0.1 (i re-checked my tank's logbook) since i introduced the fishes... During the first year i was also adding Aqua Plus with all the water changes...

More information, i have also got two 200L FW tanks, i use the same water directly from the tap for the weekly water changes (i change 30L weekly on these 2 tanks). On both my amonia and nitrite levels are 0... and one of the tanks contains 4 healthy Discus...

The point is, is it possible that my amonia tests are showing me wrong results because of the salt? The tank should be more than cycled by now... I am using Nh3 test from Hagen...

Thanks!

Is that a test kit for both FW/SW?

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