The Puffer Forum

Hi everyone, part time lurker, lots of great info I've used since owning my puffer, thanks for that. Registered today to ask a question regarding a change in behavior for my dwarf puffer.

I'll start with water conditions:
Nitrate ~10ppm
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
GH ~80ppm
KH ~100ppm
pH 6.8 constant/stable

Tank is a 20gal long and he has 5 neon tetra friends, 1 Otocinclus friend, and 1 rubbernose pleco friend. I do weekly water changes of about 30%.

Here is the situation, I think either my puffer is going blind, has damaged his eye/eyes, or may have early cloud eye. A week or so ago he began having trouble striking his food accurately, missing by more than an inch to either side of it. Sometimes he'll be dead-on but stop short of it. He looks pretty confused, and I think gets frustrated and just swims around not understanding why he can't get the food. I feed both frozen brine shrimps and bloodworms alternatively. I was getting pretty worried about him and did a 50% water change and added some aquarium salt in case he had damaged his eye from running along the glass. No change in behavior after 3 days so I did another 30% water change to remove some of the salt (I understand the rubbernose pleco does not like salt). 3 more days and no change. I have been watching him closely and he has had this same behavior the whole time, no worse, no better. I am feeding more so that I can steer food at him in larger quantities so that he can get a few of them by accident.

It's hard for me to tell if he has clouding eyes. They appear clear, and have the normal blue/green hue under the aquarium light, but sometimes in low light areas I find them to look hazy. This too is constant over the course of the last week, no worse no better, so I may just be trying to see something in his eyes and fooling myself. I shone a flashlight at him tonight and noticed a slight copper sheen on the outside lens of his eyes, right in the pupil area, and separate from the normal blue/green shine from inside the lens. I've never noticed this before, but then again, I've never shone a flashlight directly at him before.

I'm looking for thoughts/suggestions. I'll check back in the A.M. and see if any of you have responded. Thanks!

-Devlin.

Your parameters look great. Were they tested after the WC? Try adding Melafix.

Ok, I've read about that stuff. I picked some up at the fish store today and will do a treatment, looks like 7 days total. I'll keep you posted on results!

As for the water readings, yes, that was after a 50% 7 days ago and a 30% 3 days ago. I've never let the Nitrates rise above ~20ppm and have never had a Nitrite or Ammonia spike, even after adding fish. I keep it very clean and out of the sun, don't overfeed, etc. As far as I'm concerned it's damn near perfect, doesn't cause me any trouble, I just wanna get Bill back to feeding with his own eyes. Hope this treatment helps, if not, I'll be back to brainstorm some more with you! Thank you!

-Devlin.

That sheen doesn't sound out of the ordinary to me, though the behavior does... How odd.

Hi all, sorry for the bit of delay, here's an update:

Current water conditions:

Nitrate ~15ppm
Nitrite 0
Ammonia 0
GH ~80ppm
KH ~100ppm
pH 6.8 constant/stable

Since my last post I have done a full Melafix treatment after removing the carbon filter media. After the seven day stretch I did a 25% water change and continued treatment for another two days since I didn't see notable improvements in my dwarf puffer. After this I decided it either wasn't working, or I'm chasing a ghost. I then did an approx. 40% water change over the course of two days last week. My puffer has been feeding, but I still have to get it right in front of him so he can see it. Then three days ago I noticed one of my Neon Tetras to be very pale and twitchy. After some research I came to conclude that he had Neon Tetra Disease and was nearing death. I netted and euthanized the sick fish in vodka. Very sad, and am open to suggestions on how to euthanize properly, this is the first time I've had to do it and vodka was the most humane remedy I had at the house late at night. He didn't even try to get away from the net, I feel I did him a good favor rather than letting him suffer. The other 4 tetras are doing well, time will tell if the sick fish had time to spread the disease.

Back to my puffer, over the last couple of days he seems to be less shy, again coming up top when I begin to feed. Still has some trouble seeing, but I feel he's getting better, but just a little. I will keep you posted again after another week and water change.

It seems there is a lot going on at once all of the sudden so if I'm missing some task that anyone notices, or should take precautions against NTD please advise. Thanks to all of you!

-devil.

Alcohol is pretty quick. I've used clove oil, but don't know if it's the "best" way. I did a quick bit of research in the library and found this. library/hospital/euthanasiaoptions/
Hope it helps.

For NTD I believe the best thing you can do is just make sure the other tetras can't nibble at one that dies from it.

Thank you for the above post. The other fish appear to be good, I don't think they were nibbling on their friend while he was still alive.

As for Mr. Puffer, slowly more and more eager to eat, still appears to have trouble seeing exactly where the food is if at all. I'm going to assume that he has damaged one of his eyes, possibly throwing off his right/left and depth perception. With a little more time invested in feeding he seems to be otherwise perfectly fine. Thanks everyone, if something changes I'll drop back in for some more advice. Have a nice day.