The Puffer Forum

Hello everyone,
First off I want to thank everyone for contributing to this wonderful site.

I have been raising a T. Miurus for about a year now. He is about 2.5 inches long and is the star of my office. (he was posted in last months competition).

Recently he has been acting a little "different" and I am starting to get worried so I thought I would question the community for help.

He lives in a 3 foot long tank all by himself and some feeder fish. The water parameters as of late last weeks are:
PH about 7.5-8.0
Nitrite ~0
Nitrate 20-30ppm
Temp 28'C

In the tank I have a small wood log which I have used for over 2 years and some simple water plants.

His behavior started about 1 month ago. He used to eat the feeder fish in virtually one gulp. Lately, however, he likes to chew them up and spit them out (sometimes it looks like hes is throwing up). Originally, I thought I might just have too many feeder fish but I counted what he eats and he doesn't finish any fish completely now. I always see halves of fish or chewed up bodies. I then thought he might be bored of his food. I have tried snails (crushed and uncrushed), live shrimp (from my local aquarium) and thawed frozen shrimp from the supermarket. I also bought some small gold fish in case he wanted a different fish flavor. The result however seems to be a general lack of appetite. I can have a pristine piece of shrimp at his nose (he has eaten shrimp before) but he'll pass on it and still strike at the feeder fish when they come to eat the shrimp.

I have been suspecting now that he is sick and about 2 weeks ago his poo became strange. Instead of its regular large black form, I often find him swimming around with a long transparent "string" of poop. I often have to help wipe it off else he can go days with is stuck to him.

Now I know feeder fish are often prone to parasites. I am thinking the problem could be that he has something in his stomach ruining his appetite (or making feeding uncomfortable) and pooping funny. He has started to get thinner.

My local pet store sold me some medicine for internal parasites. It has a Chinese name on the box (btw I live overseas) so I am afraid I can't describe it effectively to you. Regardless, I have been using half its prescription for a week now and it doesn't seem to have any effect. I know feeder fish aren't the best for him but he doesn't eat shrimp and he often has snails crawling around his head (when he is buried).

I am very good with my aquarium care. I change a 3rd of my tanks water at least 2 times a week and no more then 3. I vacuum the gravel once a month.

I am hoping someone can provide some possible answers to these questions:

1) What do you think is the problem and what meds or actions should I take? (I have a hard time finding the meds posted on the web site but if you can give me brand names it helps since all the ingredients are often listed in Chinese here)
2) What alternate foods can I feed him? I have tried shrimp, shrimp tails, snails (ones my friend dwarf puffers eat) and small fish.

Thank you for reading my long post and for any suggestions you have.

Fish in general, are a bad diet for your puffer. I had a similar species (T suvattii) that must have been fed mostly a diet of fish before I got him & within 6 weeks he died of liver disease. You MUST get your fish on other foods, like worms or crustaceans. Try a live earthworm 1st. Go on to trying to thread a people shrimp & bounce it in front of it, as if it's alive. Mine never touched snails. I had a giant apple snail as a tank mate for over a year. Your puffer may have to go without food for quite some time, before it will eat dead foods. If your puffer might have internal parasites, it must be treated internally. There is a sticky in this forum about meds for that. You chould try to soak your puffer's food in the Chinese meds (don't know if they will help, without knowing what they are) but if it's not eating, it will be difficult to get this med into your puffer. Adding garlic juice helps induce appetite & you can soak food in that, as well as adding to the tank.

If you are keeping your puffer in gravel, it will be more comfortable in sand deep enough to bury in, but you must stir it thoroughly, before weekly water changes.

That sounds like intestinal parasites to me. Stringy white feces and spitting out food both together are a good bet for intestinal parasites. I'm out of the loop on what is vaialable for gut parasites now.

Don't feed piscivores live fish from the same water conditions unless you have raised them yourself. Frozen thawed silversides (SW) would be much safer, along with presoaked krill, or QT'd and gut loaded Ghost shrimp (live).

When I deworm my fish, I soak their food in a mixture of metronidazole and Levimasole (a pig wormer). Basically I use the measuring scoop from the Metronizole and mix one scoop of each med in a little water, then soak the food in that for a while. It doesn't taste very good (according to my fish) so I'd fast the fish for a few days before hand to get them to eat it more willingly, or the garlic juice might help.

There is an option of treating the water if the fish is no longer eating, but I don't know if that would be too much for puffers, with them being so sensitive. I've never had to try it, thank goodness.

I never used to deworm, but after I tried it, I was really impressed. Fish that hadn't grown in years had minor growth spurts, and there was defiante difference in the feces of the fish that I suspected had parasites.

Links to where I get the 2 products I use, so you can see brand names and ingredients:

Metronidazole
Levimasole

I have some Metronidazole powder but I have not used it yet. I treated a couple of my F8s with PraziPro (Praziquantel) by soaking their food in a couple of drops. It worked really well but I discontinued the treatment to soon and the Puffs got skinny again.