The Puffer Forum

Hi,

I have a small porcupine fish, about 2 inches long, bought 5 days ago. I keep him temporary into a bare 30L quarantine tank, SG 1.025, temp 25.5 celsius. Yesterday I think I overfeed the fish and this morning he was at the bottom of the tank. I read water parameters and they were very bad, besides NH4 and PO4 being 0, No2 about 4 ppm Nitrite while No3 must be near top of the Salifert scale, I would say 80-90 ppm. While changing water he started to regurgitate alot of mysis shrimp he ate yesterday. Literary the small quarantine tank was filled with mysis. I changed water 4 times to get rid of all of this food and now I read No2, No3, Po4 with 0 values. I had other fish in that small quarantine tank but no one was able to polute the water so badly in 5 days.

There was no sign of this coming, yesterday evening the fish was fine, acting normally, the next morning he was barely swimming.

However the porc now if swimming but looks letargic and just hang around the i25 filter near the water surface. I saw him a couple of times trying to regurgitate but nothing comes out of of him.

It is possible to have a permanent damage due such experience? Is there anything else I should try to do to improve the condition?

Thank you.

Keep doing water changes until you get your water parameters into a healthy range.

I wrote that now I read No2, No3 and Po4 as being 0...

+1 energiser . You need to be doing at least daily waterchanges, these guys give off a massive bio load. 50% wc per day minimum. What size tank will he be going into?

I'm not sure if you guys are carefully reading the post, I have not asked about water changes, I did not ask what tank is suitable for this fish but I did ask if there is anything else that can be done at this moment i.e. adding some medicine or whatever else.

Thank you.

We are answering your question. Waterchanges will help fix this. I asked what tank size out of curiosity as I am interested in other people's set ups.

Here is the tank where it will stay alone, about 800 liters plus a 200 liters sump. http://www.ndaquatics.co.uk/?pg=details&ii=34 It should okay for a while. If getting too big I'm going to donate it to the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth. This is the plan with any fish I have, if they grow too large either I will support the cost of shipping them back to the ocean or donate to a place with enough space.

The problem is that I have overlooked the quarantine tank these days for some reason being sure that water is fine. It turned out that I was wrong.

Water parameters are perfect now but still after about 10 hours the fish is not behaving normaly. The changes after water changem, beside water parameters are:

Before:
- lying at the bottom, breathe rapidly visible by mouth opening and closing, fins barely moving

After:
- hanging at the surface exactly where the filter is returning the water
- fins moving constantly to stay in that very small water curent
- mouth not moving at all
- I can see body dilating as fish is breathing at a slow rate

Is this the sign of returning to normal?

Also it is not showing any interes to things moving aroud, not showing any sign of being hungry. It will eventualy swim away if I put a finger next to him and then return to the filter again.

My initial questions were:

- After such experience it is possible to have a permanent issue due very bad water conditions or/and overfeeding?
- Is there anything else I can do at this moment to improve the situation?

Thank you.

For such a short exposure you should be fine. Keep your qt tank clean (50% daily w/c minimum) and no further damage will be done. That tank sounds good you will have to show us pics when ready if not already. Any puffer pics for us to see?

I would say he's starting to feel better. He will come round and show interest in you soon. Does the qt have a bubbler?

I have a couple of tanks, a 400 liters with a small yellow cowfish, a 240 with a small yellow boxfish, a small mandarin plus about 10 snails and hermit crabs.

There is also another 100 liters quarantine with a green cowfish. Then I have this puffer in quarantine.

The only pictures I have are for the 400 cowfish tank. https://picasaweb.google.com/br03zum/Co ... uly292011#

No, I do not have a bubbler (I assume this means an airstone).

Wow that sounds scary! My puffer regurgitated only one t time, I think my husband caught a bad batch of rolypolies. I syphoned out the mess and did a water change, he was fine. I have to guess your little guy will be too.
Other than what you're already doing, feed him less and less often, although I'm sure you already are.

You caught it quickly, acted quickly, got your levels down quickly, so permanent damage is unlikely.

Good luck!

Classic mts sufferer . Lol

The porc fully recovered after 72 hours.

The only treatment was very clear water, changed daily.

One thing I've noticed: The fish first regurgitated alot of food and the next day made alot of poop, both of these on the event of water being changed with alot of turbulence which definetely disturbed the fish alot. Which makes me think that the turbulence of water along with some stress made him sick and somehow triggered those two things which 'cleared' the fish of toxins.

Thanks anyone for the interest shown.

Great news, thanks for the update.

Glad everything good again . oh screw it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL