The Puffer Forum

my puffers eyes started to get cloudy about 4 days ago. at first i thought he had ich due to a tang that died from it a few days before but now it looks like fungus. it is only on the eyes and a tiny bit just started to appear on his fins. my clown also died due to what seemed like a fungus. i brought my puffer to the LFS thinking they would treat him there. they took a look at him and also believed it was a fungus so they sent us home with melafix. i have heard many different things about this product, some love it and some claim that it kills everything in the tank. after two doses all fish and inverts look healthy. the puffer has not gotten worse or better over the past day or so. he did not eat at the last feeding because he can not see, so tonight i am going to try feeding him with a dropper.

i have had him for about a year. we just moved all of the fish from a 110 to a 120 gallon about three months ago and all the fish have been fine until i put that stupid tang in there. the 120 has a 65 gallon sump and of course we used the water and sand from the 110 so it did not have to cycle again. so technically the tank has been set up for a year and a half. they get fed every other day(krill, silver sides and either blood worms or mysis). i have a fox face, damsel, dragon wrasse, carpet and long tip anemone and a coral banded shrimp (and a cleaner wrasse who has just been moved to the sump because he bothers all the fish and they had bite marks from him.)

lately i have been using ich attack and melafix. i also was using algaefix but i stopped that while dosing meds. i also use a vitamin supplement from seachem. i use instant ocean salt. i also dose with prime once in a while to help the slime coat.

ph 8.2 nitrate 0 (amazingly!) salinity 1.024
ammonia 0 nitrite 0

all tested yesterday

i will try to get a picture up soon thanks!

I'm not really up to par on salt water diseases, but the only thing that seems off is the use of algaefix, I know that puffers are sensitive, I don't know the chemical makeup of algaefix, but I've heard people say it's not invert safe, so may not be puffer safe. However, I doubt that is why your puffer is sick in first place though, just thought I'd mention it since I read it somewhere sometime.

Have you been trying any antibiotics? Saltwater Maracyn? I believe that is puffer safe as it says safe for scaleless, and it will cover gram positive bacteria and fungal, since you mentioned it looked like a fungus.

How is he doing so far? Do you have any pics yet?