The Puffer Forum

My buddy got three SA puffers a while back. After a few weeks they got HAMMERED by ich. We have tried EVERYTHING to get rid of it from half doses of malachite green to salt to copper. he gave me one and i managed to get rid of the ich on it. The smallest one died, and the biggest one is not doing well. What else can I do?

hospitalinity is the best cure known for ich. I recently went through a heavy ich problem myself and it cured it. I thought for sure I was going to loose my puffer but he is doing better than ever now.
Read the sticky and the top of the hospital treatment forum on how to treat ich using hospitalinity.
My puffer is a saltwater puffer so I had to lower the salt level. The sticky says to lower it below 1.015, but I had to lower my salt level to 1.009-1.008 before the ich died off. Until I got the specific gravity down to that level my puffer looked awful. Once I got the specific gravity down to 1.009 the ich was completely gone from my puffer in 3 days then I kept the specific gravity at the 1.009 mark for almost 6 weeks and then gradually brought it back up again.
If you have a fresh water puffer I believe you just have to do the opposite and raise the salt level. Read up on it. It will take care of the problem.

tried it, didn't work

It takes time and it does work as well as or better than other treatment options. You just have to be diligent and patient.

Kman, can you give puffernuke a link to your thread on this?

I believe that the reference made was to SW Whitespot, a different parasite than FW Ich. As the SAPs are FW fish, you would have to assume that they have or had FW Ich and that hyposalinity (I think that was the intended term, not hospitalinity - of which I do not know the meaning) will do nothing at all for the disease.

Oops! A thread skimming bad on my part--RTR is correct. Although in this case, adding salt & raising the temp to 87 degrees, along w/large daily water changes, while vacuuming the gravel may help (almost always has in my case). There is an article on treating FW ich in the Hospital Forum.

I read it and have tried all of them, but it is still there

puffernuke - on the salt & temp. treatment...how long did you keep it up? Did you do daily water changes with gravel vacuuming? How high did you take the temperature up to?

That treatment, with persistence and time, usually works as well as any medicine I've tried. I can see it taking a couple of weeks in a really bad case.

Eric

i did it for four weeks. temp was mid to high 80's. yes i did daily changes a vac. i did just what the post on ich said. this ich is getting irritating.

Yes, ich on SAPs can be a real PITA!

Wow, you certainly carried through with treatment more than long enough...

Do you have the healthy one separated from the sick one?

Off topic, where you at around the lake?

Eric in KC, MO.

hmm i think you may have something else going on. medicating and ich generally fall into two catergories, stress ich and true infestation breakout ich.

you have the latter, and i would move your puffers to a bare bottmed tank with as little decor as possible (prefferably pvc pipe as it is inert and can be cleaned easy.)

the ich is living in the gravel and anywhere else it can live in cyst stage, so get them into a bare bottomed tank and let the puffs stay out of the iffected tank for 4 weeks, its a long time but that ensures ich dies off in that tank.

with them in the q/t you can use meds, but also hypersalinity for you would work better, as will the temp thing, since the cysts will be visible as a light dustign on the tank bottom you can vac them easily as well

sad news. I walked into by roommates room where he keeps the puffer and found in fused to the filter. the ich got the best of him . thanks for the advice anyway. p.s. I live in mariners cove apts. in osage beach

Sorry to hear he didn't make it...does that leave you with one healthy on still?

Personally, concerning the lake, I think you're in a great spot. I've been remiss and haven't been down there in a few years. Now that my son is 7, I think we'll head down to Ha Ha Tonka this spring for some hiking...

Were these puffers locally bought? Is there a good LFS to visit?

Eric