The Puffer Forum

I have 2 Tetrodon suvattii's in a 200 gallon tank. they are about 3.5 inches and seem to be fairly healthy. I feed them guppies and frozen blood worms mostly. about 3 weeks ago I noticed one of them looked like he was stiff. not totally frozen but like he did not move a freely as he did in the past. Then his left peck fin developed 3 good size white spots. (larger than ick) and that fin was definitely giving him problems. figuring he had some sort of parasite or infection I did a 20% water change and tested for NO2 and NH3. they were fine. It seemed to be getting worse so I did 30% change and tested the water again this time adding some aquarium salt and stress coat. The last week he had holes in that fin and on his dorsal fin. It appears that there is a small growth on his gill right buy the spotted pec fin. I stopped in to a local pet store and talked to a guy that seemed very knowledgeable of puffer's he told me to put him in a 10 gallon and treat him with Aquafish Penicillin. One tablet every other day. well I'm 3 days in, and he was laying on the bottom on his side breathing heavy with no sigh of improvement. so I decided to test the water. everything checked out fine but the NH3+NH4 was at an alarming 1.5 mg. so I did a 20% water change adding 3ml of aqusafe. that was about 2 hours ago and he seems to be doing a bit better. any suggestions??

For a bit of back; ground the 10 gallon was set up so i had a place for 3 day storage for my feeders. I dumped it out and filled it with the water from the 200 so the water did not change and put some rocks on the bottom.

Edit: Moved from General Discussion to the Hospital section

I would do 80% water changes before each dose of meds. The meds are wiping out the biological filtration. Add Melafix & Pimafix to the water daily.

Your fish should not be eating a diet of fish but crustaceons. Check the GSP articles in The Library for feeding ideas .

Have your thought that there may be a possibility that everytime you offer feeder fish you coulld be introducing a disease? Feeder fish and bloodworm are not a very suitable diet for these puffers. Try feeding cockles and mussels, krill and prawns etc.

Yea, but to minimize the chance of that happening I never put them in straight from the bag. they are acclimated in my hold tank for at least 3 to 7 days.

But it looks like I'm loosing this one. this morning when I left for work he was on his side i did a 50% change and put another filter that had been running on my healthy tank on it. ::::Fingers Crossed:::::

May be I should have stuck with chichlids?

Any update?