The Puffer Forum

My 10" MBU puffer is sick. Any suggestions/help? It's appreciated! Photos below.

Are you mainly concerned with the white on his back? If so, how long has it been there. How is he behaving? Is he eating well? Have you seen his poop?

He's very long, but he looks like he could be a bit chubbier in my opinion. How often do you feed and what are you feeding him?

We really need more information about the situation in order to have a guess at what might be wrong with him.

You'll also need to answer all the questions in red up at the top

pufferpuggirl wrote:Are you mainly concerned with the white on his back? If so, how long has it been there. How is he behaving? Is he eating well? Have you seen his poop?

He's very long, but he looks like he could be a bit chubbier in my opinion. How often do you feed and what are you feeding him?

We really need more information about the situation in order to have a guess at what might be wrong with him.

Yes, I worry about the white spots on his back as well as his color in general. He looks very dark. When he was healthy he had a more light colored skin. White spots been on there for about a week. Right now he seems to do a little bit better, but usually he's swimming kind of uncoordinated and sometimes lays on the back. He didn't eat for about a week now. He watches the food and that's about it. I feed him mussels, snails & bloodworms. Also below there's a picture of him when he was doing fine. BIG difference.

A sure sign of your mbu being ill is him not eating for a week, as for the white spots I am unsure, usually if it's ich it attacks the fins as well. My mbu had white spots on him awhile back, and it almost looked like a fuzzy fungus, I treated with melafix & pimafix because I didn't really know what the problem was, and it cleared up in 2-3 days. His colouring was very dark/blotchy as well. If you can get him to eat I'd give him a nice hefty meal I agree with Suzanne, he is a on the skinny side! It looks like a fungus of some sort.. but hopefully some of the experts know what's wrong!!

Those are Mbu pimples, I do believe. Usually indicate declining water quality. Quite common because Mbu so quickly outgrow just about everything. Please answer all the questions in red at the top. I have copy-pasted them below. Without seeing these numbers, we can't guess what might be causing the pimples, other than generically saying bigger tank good, more water changes good, dumping chemicals into the tank because they promise to magically cure skin ailments, BAD.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.