The Puffer Forum

Hi, today I realized that my green spotted puffer fish has an inflamed or swollen gill on one of his sides. These last two days I noticed that he would hold his fin, by the now inflamed gill, close to his body for a while and then would use it again like normal. But I didn't worry too much about it then because I saw that he was able to use it so I just figured that it would go back to normal. But now I'm really worried because his gill is now inflamed! Does anyone know which meds might cure his gill, or what caused this to happen in the first place?

I think it's kinda been a rough start for him because I got him at Walmart, didn't know any better and had him in a 10 gallon tank for a few weeks. Now he is in a 20 gal all to himself and seems happier but now he has a swollen gill. Please let me know what I can do to heal his inflamed gill, Thank you!!!

Please answer the questions in red.

1. Ammonia 2.0
Nitrite 0
Nitrates 30
ph 7.5-8.0
(I'm doing a water change right now, I found a pieace of rotting food in his tank, could that have raised the
ammonia and nitrates?)
2. 20gal tank all to himself
3. three days ago did a 50% water change with Amquel plus
4. He was in a 10 gal but I upgraded three days ago
5. only up three days but I used the water and decor from the 10 gal

did you also use the filter and filter media from the 10 gal? just the water and decorations would not be enough to carry over the benificial bacteria thats turns ammonia to nitrite and the to nitrate. when I up a tank, the old filter, media and all goes into the new one as well. it may not be enough for the tank but it already has enough BB for the fishes current waste cycle.

Good call on doing the water change. Yes, the rotting food could definitely raise those values. What are they normally? What are your nitrates out of the tap?

nzac wrote:did you also use the filter and filter media from the 10 gal? just the water and decorations would not be enough to carry over the benificial bacteria thats turns ammonia to nitrite and the to nitrate. when I up a tank, the old filter, media and all goes into the new one as well. it may not be enough for the tank but it already has enough BB for the fishes current waste cycle.

I did not put the old filter on his new tank because the new filter is on the hood of the tank, but I did put the old filter media in the new filter with the new media. I hope this is enough.

Flutter wrote:Good call on doing the water change. Yes, the rotting food could definitely raise those values. What are they normally? What are your nitrates out of the tap?

I haven't really had the tank for very long so I don't really know but they are usually in the safe range. Should I test the tap water to see how many nitrates it has? Normally in the tank it is less than 10.

Is his swollen gill from poor water quality? Is there any medicine that I can give him to make his swollen gill go down(heal)?

super clean water...

possibly some Epsom Salts. That being said, you'd have to understand the root cause of the inflammation in order to treat it properly. "Possibly" the key word there. Melafix / Pimafix may or may not help.

When puffers eat, the blow stuff out of the gills. This debris may have scratched it and caused an irritation.

What is your regular feeding habits and how often?

Water quality can inflame the gills especially if ammonia or nitrite are present.

Ammonia burns gills.

J-P wrote:super clean water...

possibly some Epsom Salts. That being said, you'd have to understand the root cause of the inflammation in order to treat it properly. "Possibly" the key word there. Melafix / Pimafix may or may not help.

When puffers eat, the blow stuff out of the gills. This debris may have scratched it and caused an irritation.

What is your regular feeding habits and how often?

Water quality can inflame the gills especially if ammonia or nitrite are present.

I think I over feed him, I feed him mainly frozen blood worms like one cude a day and usually skip a day once in a while.
So should I just do water changes every day until he shows improvments? If so how many gals should I take out every wc? (it's a 20 gal). Should I just do the water changes or should I also do some kind of treatment? How dangerous is it for him to have a inflamed gill, and how long do you think it will take to go back to normal? I'm worried about him.

Pufferpunk wrote:Ammonia burns gills.

So the cause was most likely poor water quality? Poor guy I feel so sorry for him, and bad that I let the water quality get bad. Is there anything I should do other than water changes, will it just go back to normal when the water is good?

Thank you everyone for your help!

With the ammonia at 2, I'd do 80% WC 2x/day, until it remains at 0. It may only take a couple of days, but you need to check nitrite too. Add Melafix for the inflamed gill & an air stone to help with O2 exchange.

As far as feeding--be sure you defrost & rinse the worms & drain in a brine shrimp net. You need to vary his diet too & be sure to feed crunchy foods:
library/feeding/feeding-your-puffers/

Pufferpunk wrote:With the ammonia at 2, I'd do 80% WC 2x/day, until it remains at 0. It may only take a couple of days, but you need to check nitrite too. Add Melafix for the inflamed gill & an air stone to help with O2 exchange.

As far as feeding--be sure you defrost & rinse the worms & drain in a brine shrimp net. You need to vary his diet too & be sure to feed crunchy foods:
library/feeding/feeding-your-puffers/

Ok so I should do 80% wc twice a day? Ok I can do that but when I do a wc should I use Amquel plus every time like I would on a normal water change? Amquel plus claims that it eliminates Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates as well as other harmful stuff. But it says to allow a 24 hour period between single dose applicatins. I'll buy some melafix tomorrow, I don't have a air stone, but I do have a air pump, so I'll probally get a air stone tomorrow as well.

I have some ramshorn snails on their way here from ebay.
As for the frozen blood worms, i've been just giving the frozen cude without defrosting it, he seemed to love tugging on it, but I had no idea it was bad for him. I'll make sure to defrost it for now on. I read the link you gave me and they said that it would be good to defrost it in vitamin water. What kind of vitamin water should I use and where would I get it at? Thank you so much for your help!

Improving the water quality is a good first step. You should keep using the Amquel as it is a water condition and chlorine isn't any good for gills either. At some point you'll want to switch to something that doesn't have all those additives in it though. There's really no point for them in a well maintained aquarium.

Airstones are quite cheap, shouldn't cost you more than a dollar

Does he really need to eat a whole cube? Sounds like you might be overfeeding and can cut back on that

I use VitaChem and Selcon. The fish don't seem to care either way except for our F8, she prefers the VitaChem. What you can then do is to put the bloodworms in a small glass of tank water (we use a shot glass with about 10-15mL of water) and a drop or two of the supplements and then let it soak for a bit. If it's frozen food we let it soak for an hour or two. We also soak all of our processed foods and they don't need to soak as long.

You should be able to buy it at your LFS though it might be tucked away somewhere. I think it will be a lot harder to find in a store that isn't dedicated to fish.

I believe Selcon is for SW fish. I'd use the FW Vita-Chem.

Yep, we started using Selcon for our discus. The fatty acids in it are more suited to large cichlids which are prone to HLLE than the FW supplements. The other fish just get the VitaChem unless they're sharing discus food.

Completely forgot to mention that part

I'll try that then. I usually split up my blackworms into FW/SW containers & soak in the appropriate vits.

The problem I've had with my discus is them wasting away. We think there may be a dominant one not letting the others eat.