The Puffer Forum

Kukah just bit the glass tip of his thermometor off!!! OMG OMG OMG what do i do????? i know this is a dumb question, but will he be okay?????? omg im so worried.... should i feed him to get him to pass it??? oh my god... i dont know what to do... the mercury didnt break thank god, i guess... but i dont know what to do!!!!! i guess ill try feeding him like a ton of shrimp or something... i hope it kind of surrounds the glass... omg... im so freaking out! i wanna cry.

Oh Dear!
I have no suggestions but I hope that it passes okay!

he still is very active... i fed him 3 shrimp with the shells on.... im hoping the shrimp will kind of go around the glass in his tummy and make it less dangerous... i hope i dont wake up to a dead "Kukah" in the morning oh man, if he pulls through this, i learned my lesson for having glass thermometors... i never really considered it a threat... i guess ill get one of those didgital ones

If no one here has dealt with this before, might I suggest that you contact WetWebMedia? There will be a variety of experts, and surely one of them has dealt with a fish that ingested a foreign object...

Are you sure he's eaten it, or just broken it? My GSP's have broken theirs before, and nothing happened to them. I would look in your tank for pieces of glass before you get too upset. if he doesn't appear to be in any agony, then he will probably be alright, although it's difficult to tell what's happening internally. Just remain calm.

my fahaka did this once i dont think he swallowed any glass but i was told that thermometers no longer have mercury in them. he might have just smashed the glass into little pieces which are hard to see i think its probably best if you get a stick on thermometer and dont panic check the bottom of the tank for little pieces of glass and get them out i hope he will be ok

he might have just smashed the glass into little pieces

Im thinking that as well.... In all my experience with puffers, usually when they bite somthing and they dont like it they spit it out to reexamine it..... lets hope thats what happened...

Yeah, I doubt he ate it. Get a stick on thermometer. That's all I use.

The glass thermometrs have been alcohol based for some time. Was the indicator red; shiny silver? red is alcohol, shiny silver is mercury.

Puffer spit out the hard parts generally, big chunks forward through the mouth, smaler pieces tend to be blown back through the gills.

Scoop out and toss any substrate where you see any glass slivers or bits. You will not see the tiny pieces.

Pookie has done this twice..now I use a stick on thermometer and check it with the temp gun. I was worried too but he's fine (this happened about a year or so ago).

*sniffle* i looked for some pieces on the ground, and i only saw 2 itty bitty pieces, and there was so much more than that missing... at least he didnt break the thermometor itself... i suppose he will be okay... i dont know though for like another 3 or 4 days when i know hes poo'd it all out... he seems active and still beggs for attention and window surfs for me... so i guess theres probably no internal damage so far... but i do think he ingested at least some. the suctioncup came off the glass so it was bobbing in the tank, i think he thought it was food. since it wasnt stationery like it usually is.

whats a stick thermometor? is it the didgital ones? are they expensive? and how do they work? sorry for all the questions... ive only heard the word didgital thermometor... never actually seen or used one

*sigh* i hope hes gonna be okay

PS- HE BIT ME TODAY! guess i should be a little more careful... oh man does that boy have some bite in him... puffer teeth dont feel good... after he bit me i realized what i was doing made my finger look alot like food... i was scooping out some excess duckweed from the surface and the tip of my finger must have been in the water

BeeBoo my Mbu bit me the other day, in similar circumstances. I was trying to move the CO2 bubble counter in his tank and as soon as I put my finger in to move it, BeeBoo came over and bit me just that quick. Once he did it, he looked as if to say, "That wasn't what I thought it was!"

Not the most accurate though but I have them on all my tanks:
http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/p ... catid=3900

I've gotten up to a four-degree range with stick-ons. I prefer to use one that sits inside the tank. What about a stainless steel one?

http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/p ... catid=3921
("Stainless w/Hanger")

Well, you are getting a range of options...

I much prefer:

http://www.fosterandsmithaquatics.com/p ... atid=12089