The Puffer Forum

1) pH 7, freshwater, 'new tank' uncycled
2) 15 gallon on its own
3) -
4) -
5) Uncycled

Recently 'taken over' a green spotted puffer, previous owner kept it in a large chinese-styled gold fish bowl (10 gallon?) No filter or water changes. Puffer was sitting on bottom of tank (which was hideously dirty) and didn't put up a struggle when I fished him out.


So here's the problem: The patch of his belly where he was 'resting' on in the previous tank seems to be... missing? It kinda looks like a decayed hole/chunk of flesh gone, grey coloured. I have a feeling this is because he was motionless/swimming around on a very dirty tank floor...

Currently he's rubbing his belly on the tank floor (no substrate) swimming back and forth and the grey stuff is slowly being rubbed/peeled off

Actually a chunk of (what looks like a mass of grey flesh, pea sized) has JUST popped off...


Not sure what to do O_O

I think your puffer suffers from IP's

library/hospital/internal-parasites-pre ... treatment/

also see:
library/water-filtration/emergencycycle/

That sounds quite unpleasant. Fortunately fish are excellent regenerators of tissue. I'd aim for very clean water, very good food, and probably some Melafix. Do you have some used FW media that you can put in the filter?

It takes a lot to get a chunk out of a puffers stretchy skin, even bites from other puffers rarely do that.

This sounds bacterial, or like some type of infection.

I agree with clean water and melafix, but you may need some medicine.

If you could get a picture, that would be very helpful in determing what type of medicine you need.