discoloration

[Dakota]

Hi, we have 2 colemesus asellus puffers, we have had them for 3 weeks. In the last week one of them (his name is Chewy), has discoloration issues i.e. the golden yellow color on his back seems to have faded a bit and blends in with the color of the darker areas. For some reason, his seem to return to normal and then fades again. The other one (his name is Scooter) has perfect coloration that does not vary. They are in a 30 gallon tank, they are about an inch and a half tip to tip. They live with 2 catfish corys and a plecostomus. The pleco is about 6 inches long. They are all good eaters, especially Chewy (a little worried about him eating too much), and are both very active and seemingly healthy with the exception of Chewy's discoloration. Any ideas. Will have water tested tomorrow to give specfics. We do regular water changes at 15% per water change. We have been feeding them frozen krill, frozen mysis shrimp, frozen plankton, and frozen bloodworms daily (not all at the same time of course but like to give them variety). We also feed them live ghost shrimp and live crabs (not very sucessful with the crabs, although they have eaten them they seem to be too small to eat the crabs well just yet.

[Srkoe]

I can't really help other than to tell you to stopp feeding krill. It causes lockjaw...I'm sure that has nothing to do with the discoloration though. All my puffer change color depening on mood with the exception of my pea puffers...they always look the same. They tend to stay lighter when they are happy and darker when they are in a bad mood/hungry. I'd would personally rehome the pleco because depending on the species they can get huge, fast. I've heard pleco's have a huge bioload and with puffers having a large bioload it's probably not a good idea to have them in the same tank. Congrats on your assellus! I loved mine when I had them. I lost them due to a really bad case of Ich I could not cure . They are known for having overgrown teeth that need to be manually trimmed a few times a year. People have had great success keeping them on a mostly snail diet. I have got off subject here, sorry.

[Pufferpunk]

It's Velvet. Treat as ich: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=28113